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1
LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
BV THE SAME AUTHOR
IN THE HOUSEHOLD OF FAITH.
Crown 8vo, $1.25.
CALL TO CONFIRMATION. A Manual
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12 cents net ; cloth, 25 cents.
LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO.
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THE OLD CHURCH
IN THE NEW LAND
LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
BY
THE REV. C. ERNEST SMITH, M.A.
RECTOR OF THE CHURCH OF ST, MICHAEL AND ALL ANGELS, BALTIMORE, MD.
EXAMINING CHAPLAIN TO THE BISHOP OF MARYLAND
WITH PREFACE
BV
THE BISHOP OF MARYLAND
SECOND EDITION
NEW YORK
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO,
LONDON AND BOMBAY
1896
sc<^r
Copyright, 1S94, by
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
TROW DIBECTORY
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY
NEW YORK
PREFACE BY THE BISHOP
OF MARYLAND
The names given to books do not always give
a clear idea of their purpose. The title of this lit-
tle book, however, admirably suggests its story.
The truths are not new. They are known to
scholars, and known to many who would not
claim that name, but are only plain readers and
thinkers. But old truths need to be often told.
Each generation has to learn them for itself. And
the same old truths may be truthfully told in new
ways. Many who already love the Church, and
are sure of its identity with the Church which
our Saviour founded, will hold that conviction
more firmly and see more clearly as this new tell-
ing traces the course of its continuous history,
and throws its light on every link of the "un-
broken chain " which binds us in America, to the
first believers in Jerusalem.
"The Old Church in the New Land." Most
happily and clearly the title tells the story and the
VI PREFACE
meaning of the book. He who wrote it gained
his Christian birthright, received his Christian
blessing, and grew to Christian manhood in the
old Church in the old land. And it was at the
very cradle-seat of England's earliest Church tra-
ditions that he learned the story which he here
tells. Sent in God's providence to do missionary
duty in the new land, he found in that new land
that same old Church. In his own experience
he verified its identity ; and I do not wonder he
loves to trace it out for others to see and under-
stand.
The Church in America does not seem to some
to have had a very long, or very eventful, or
very interesting history. It is little more than
one hundred years since it began its distinct na-
tional existence, as the nation itself became inde-
pendent. But the Church was here before the
nation. Its history did not begin with the na-
tional distinctness. The line, the life, runs back
unbroken, and claims its part in all the rich story
of the Mother Church of England. That history
is our history also.
And it is well and helpful that this identity
should be brought clearly and often to the minds
of the Church people in America, and that they
PREFACE Vll
should claim and love every sacred memory and
glorious incident of England's Church life as be-
longing to them also.
It is England's Church History claimed as our
American heritage, and told to American ears as
belonging to American hearts.
The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United
States of America is not a new Church or one
lately born. The civil law of the State of Mary-
land so affirms, when, soon after the War of Inde-
pendence, it was enacted that the vestry of each
parish " shall have good titles and estates in all
property heretofore belonging to the Church of
England, now called * The Protestant Episcopal
Church in Maryland.' " And in another place it
speaks of '* The Protestant Episcopal Church,
heretofore called the Church of England."
The life, then, of this Church in America is the
continuation of the life begun in apostolic days
in England.
" Coelum, non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt."
To trace the links of that continuity — to make
churchmen feel sure through them of an aposto-
lic origin — to help them know that this is no late-
born sect — but that in it we are in the very
Vlll PREFACE
" fellowship of the Apostles," is the purpose of
this book. We too often read English history,
and especially English Church history, as if it
were foreign history. But their glories are ours.
It is our own early history which we thus trace
back to its real beginning.
The chapters of this book were first given as
lectures in the course of parochial Instruction.
The immediate and permanent and studious in-
terest awakened in those who heard them was
evident proof of their helpfulness.
I have often been asked to name books for
family reading, or sermons and lectures which
would be both interesting and instructive for the
use of lay-readers. This story of *' The Old
Church in the New Land " may well be added to
any such list.
William Paret,
Bishop of Maryland.
CONTENTS
I.
II.
III.
The Source of all Christianity,
The Channel of American Christianity,
PAGE
I
15
Our First Missionary Heroes, SS. Patrick and
COLUMBA, 35
IV. The First Italian Mission to England, in the
Sixth Century, 53
V. Our Church Under the Saxons, . . . -73
VI. The First Primate of all England, . . .89
VII. Our Church under the Normans, .... 105
VIII. The Babylonian Bondage, 123
IX. An Anglican Elijah, 143
X. The End of Captivity, 157
XI. The Restoration, 173
XII. The Nag's Head Fable. An Apocryphal Story, . 193
XIII. Shakespeare a Son of the Reformation, . .211
XIV. Puritanism, 229
XV. The Church of England in Our Times, . . .245
XVI. America, the Heritage of Our Church, . . 263
I.
THE SOURCE OF ALL CHRISTIANITY
I.
THE SOURCE OF ALL CHRISTIANITY
" The church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the
truth." — I Timothy iii. 15.
A KNOWLEDGE of some of the chief facts in the
history of the Church has become almost a neces-
sity to every churchman ; and there are, con-
sequently, few subjects upon which lecture-ser-
mons can more appropriately be preached in our
day than on Church History, especially on the
history of our own branch. To some persons
this may seem a very unedifying kind of a sub-
ject ; they prefer what is known as ^' Gospel
preaching ; " they have indeed no interest in any
other ; and if, unfortunately, they are compelled
to listen to any other, they imagine there is no
help in it, and are none the better for it, but
rather the worse. Now there is no more satis-
factor}^ argument for a course of sermons on the
Church than that which is furnished by the ex-
istence of this very class of Christians. Surely
4 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
they are themselves the best evidence we can
have that the Church has been remiss in its duty,
for the real cause of such indifference is want of
knowledge. Many do not know even the sim-
plest and most important facts about their
Church. This want of knowledge is indeed sin-
gular. It is unlike the usual conduct of men on
other occasions and in other affairs. If we are de-
scended from distinguished fathers and mothers,
and are entitled to armorial quarterings and hon-
orable distinctions, we are not unmindful of the
fact, and we do not wish others to be unmindful
of it. But in our ecclesiastical life, with such dis-
tinguished ancestry as ours is, it is simply mar-
vellous that some of us take no pride in their spir-
itual pedigree; although we justly claim to be
members of that branch of Christ's Church which
has an origin as venerable as any, and which has
had a record honorable beyond an}^ and which
has the prospect of a still more glorious future,
for it has its hold to-day upon the hearts and con-
sciences of the most influential and intellectual
portion of the most vigorous and progressive of
all the nations of the modern world. It is a
Church, indeed, the mention of whose name
should cause a glow of pardonable pride to thrill
THE SOURCE OF ALL CHRISTL\NITY 5
the veins of everyone of its members, as he utters
the words of thankfulness and praise, " Thank
God, I am a member of that Church ! " " Bap-
tized, catechised, confirmed in her, I rejoice in
my inheritance ; and I thankfully accept at her
hands the Bread of Life distributed by her."
We speak, then, of the Anglo - American
Church, that Church which in Britain and the
dependencies of Britain is called the Anglican
Church, and in these United States of America
The Protestant Episcopal Church, which is in-
deed the same Church. But if we are to under-
stand the subject we must define our terms.
What do we mean by the Church ? What is the
Church ? We speak, it is true, in the creed of
the *^ holy Catholic Church " and profess our
belief in it ; but are we sure that we have an in-
telligent grasp of the subject, so that we can give
to every one that asks us a reasonable explanation
of this article of our faith? What, then, is the
Church ? Two theories which we hold to be un-
tenable at once confront us. First, the Roman
theory. According to this the Catholic Church
is coextensive with the authority of the Bishop
of Rome. Where the authority of the Bishop of
Rome is not, there is not the Catholic Church.
6 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
According to this idea the great Greek com-
munion with its millions of adherents, and the
great Anglican communion with its millions, and
with its glorious opportunities and unrivalled
past, are both mere delusions ; by it they are not
what they claim to be, integral portions of the
holy Catholic Church. This theory we deem
worthy of no serious consideration.
Secondly, comes the theory of various Protes-
tant religious bodies in Western Christendom,
that there is no one duly consecrated and organ-
ized body with an outward, visible, and objective
existence. When they speak of the Church they
mean^ the general company of true believers
spread throughout the world, without any direct
reference to external relationships ; and only in
the sense that " the Church " is an invisible body,
consisting of such persons, whose names are
known only to God, will they speak of the Chris-
tian Church at all. According to this theory
Christ founded no visible Church which could
accurately be spoken of as a body or a society
having a true corporate existence, endowed with
powers of self-government, invested with distinct
privileges and blessings, and clothed with certain
responsibilities. If this view be correct, Christ's
THE SOURCE OF ALL CHRISTIANITY ^
Church is little better, if anything, than an incor-
poreal idea, having a merely subjective existence.
This theory need not trouble us more than the
first ; Christ came not to found an idea.
Now, in opposition to these two theories, our
Church in her Prayer Book and other formularies
proclaims that there is a Church with as distinct
and corporate existence as ever even any Bishop
of Rome dreamed of; but she asserts that its
limits are far wider than the widest of Rome's
pretensions ; and she further proclaims that what
is and what is not a part of this Church is simply
a question of historical evidence.
Let us see if she is warranted in her statements
by the teaching of the New Testament.
It was one great purpose of Our Lord's com-
ing to earth to found a Church. Christ came, of
course, pre-eminently to be a sacrifice for sin, and
also to be an example of godly life ; but behind
these objects there lay another. He came to
found a visible church, to establish a visible king-
dom ; not merely to make men good, or to preach
a crusade against sin, but to organize a society
which, clothed with unseen powers, endowed with
perpetual life, with definite aims and a definite
work, should conquer the world for Him, so that
8 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
the kingdoms of this world should become the
kingdoms of Our Lord and His Christ. Christ so
spoke of this Church or kingdom that we cannot
but regard it as a true kingdom in all essential
points. We cannot think of it as being merely or
as at all a theoretical bond of union, a mere sen-
timental growth, an intangible idea without a
dwelling-place, a disembodied truth, a mere col-
lection of floating theories, a thing without shape,
or form, or substance, but a definite organization ;
called spiritual not as opposed to visible and
real, but as describing better the nature of its
work and the sphere of its influence ; and of this
kingdom Christ Himself is the only true King.
Now Jesus was constantly looking forward
when on earth to the early establishment of this
kingdom. He spoke of it to His disciples, spoke
of it as something yet close at hand. Observe a
few of His utterances. He began His ministry
by calling men to repentance in language which
must have reminded His hearers of John the Bap-
tist, and even of Daniel the prophet: "Repent ye,
for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." The
kingdom prophesied by Daniel was near, but it
had not yet come. It was not yet in the world ;
its foundations had not been laid.
THE SOURCE OF ALL CHRISTIANITY 9
Witness, again, the Lord's words to Simon
Peter, St. Matthew xvi. 18, 19: "And I say also
unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this
rock I will build my church ; and the gates of
hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give
unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven :
and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be
bound in heaven : and whatsoever thou shalt
loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven/' Here
the Church of the one verse is the kingdom of
Heaven of the other. We are accustomed to
speak of the history of the Church, but it is evi-
dent that it would be equally correct to speak of
the history of the kingdom of heaven. Witness
the parables of Our Lord given by St. Matthew
in chapter xiii. : " The kingdom of heaven is
likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his
field ; but while men slept, his enemy came and
sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way."
Again it is like a grain of mustard seed ; it is like
leaven ; it is like a net. Then since they obvi-
ously speak not of a perfect kingdom but of an
imperfect, not of that which is above but that
which is on earth, since they do speak of that
which has an outward and visible existence, such
as tares and wheat growing together, saints and
10 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
sinners side by side, this is no picture of the
heaven of God at the last, into which we are told
" there shall nothing enter that defileth nor work-
eth abomination nor maketh a lie, but they only
whose names are written in the book of life."
Christ's declared intention of building or found-
ing a Church, was not, it is true, fulfilled in
His own earthly lifetime. He did indeed lay
down the laws which should govern the kingdom.
He appointed its officers and gave them au-
thority and power to appoint their successors.
He declared its character, the nature of its work
and its constitution. He revealed its sanctions.
He spent forty days on earth after His resurrec-
tion speaking to His apostles about it, giving
them final instructions ; but when He went away
the* kingdom about which He had spoken was
not in existence. There was, indeed, but one
thing wanting. It was as if some beautiful
statue, hewn out of glittering marble by the hand
of a master sculptor, stood before men, the very
personification of life, and yet wanting life. So
with the Church; all was ready, but the spirit
and the life were wanting. Now on the day of
the first Christian Pentecost, a.d. 33, this life was
visibly given and the saying of Christ fulfilled :
THE SOURCE OF ALL CHRISTIANITY II
" On this rock I will build my church." On
that day the fifth kingdom of Daniers vision was
ushered into the world. Then Christ established
forever the Church of the living God, the pillar
and ground of the truth. Accordingly after Pen-
tecost we no longer read of the Church as not yet
formed, but as in being and action, as the mys-
tical body of Christ, into which men are to be
incorporated, and in which they are to receive
the means of grace and everlasting life.
And now comes the all-important and momen-
tous question, Is this same Church historically in
the world to-day, and if so, where do we find it ?
The first of these questions is easily answered.
Christ pledged His word that the Church should
remain unto the end of the world, and we dare
not do Him such dishonor as to presume that
.that word has fruitlessly passed away or His
promise become of none effect.
As we have thus answered the first question
from Scripture, we would answer the second from
the Prayer Book, for no doctrine of the Church
is of any private interpretation. In her Twenty-
third Article we read : " It is not lawful for any
man to take upon him the office of public preach-
ing or Ministering the Sacraments in the Congre-
12 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
gation, before he be lawfully called, and sent to
execute the same." And even more emphatic is
the Preface to the Ordination Service : " No man
shall be accounted or taken to be a lawful Bishop,
Priest, or Deacon, in this Church, or suffered to
execute any of the said functions, except he be
called, tried, examined, and admitted thereunto,
according to the form hereafter following, or
hath had Episcopal Consecration or Ordination."
Wherever there is the true ministry, there is the
Church that Christ founded. Let us not fail to
note what is the real question here. It is not
whether other bodies of Christians are doing
good work, or whether their members will be
saved or not. With such questions we have ab-
solutely nothing to do. We are concerned only
with the one main question as to w^hat is that
very body that Christ came to found ; and we
conceive that it is no breach of charity to say
that it is only where Christ's appointed ministry
is that this organization exists ; and that organi-
zations which took their rise some fifteen hun-
dred years after Christ's ascension can have no
shadow of a claim to be considered parts of it.
This is not a matter of doctrine, but of historical
evidence ; not a question of theology, but of legal
THE SOURCE OF ALL CHRISTIANITY 1 3
proof. Nor is it an open question, but one on
which the Church has spoken with no uncertain
voice.
She emphatically refuses to recognize as a dis-
tinct branch of herself any body of Christians
which has not this apostolic ministry. For this
ministry, which she calls the historic episcopate,
is one essential test with her as to whether an
ecclesiastical organization is or is not a part of
herself ; yet she is not, and never has been, ex-
clusive. She cannot justly be termed narrow-
minded or bigoted. She holds this gift as in
trust for the world ; as a public not a private
trust. She refuses it to none that worthily seeks
it. But if some think otherwise, regarding it as
unnecessary, she has not a word of censure. She
leaves them to Christ She regards herself not
as a judge over them, but as entrusted with sacred
treasures for the universal benefit of the children
of men. That some count her spiritual jewels of
little or no value is to her a subject of sorrow,
but no power on earth will cause her to admit
that they have no need of these jewels. That she
may be misunderstood and misinterpreted is not
strange to her ; the Master Himself was misrep-
resented and misunderstood when He lived on
14 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
earth. Meanwhile she goes on her way, pained
sometimes by the conduct of disloyal sons even
more than by the misrepresentations of open ene-
mies ; for she knows the truth is with her, and
conscious in her Lord's abiding presence she
clings to that faith once for all delivered to her,
and continues to be the faithful dispenser of the
Word of God and of His holy sacraments ; and
so abundantly does she make real her right to
that glorious title, " The Church of the Living
God, the Pillar and Ground of the Truth."
II.
THE CHANNEL OF AMERICAN
CHRISTIANITY
II.
THE CHANNEL OF AMERICAN
CHRISTIANITY
•' Look unto the rock whence ye are hewn." — Isaiah li. i.
These words were a summons to the Jews to
look back amid their trials and difficulties to the
true source of all their life and the beginning- of
their former strength. Hearken to me, ye that
follow after righteousness, ye that seek the Lord.
Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah
that bare you. You are the children of distin-
guished parents, do not be unmindful of this ; do
not be forgetful of your birthright ; do not ignore
your glorious past. Look unto the rock whence
ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence
ye are digged. And as you rejoice in the past
and find strength in the contemplation of the
source of all that is best and noblest in what you
are to-day, rejoice also in the future — for it prom-
ises to be even more glorious ; for the Lord shall
comfort Zion, He will comfort all her waste places,
1 8 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
and He will make her wilderness like Eden, and
her desert like the garden of the Lord. Joy and
gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving and
the voice of melody.
In a very different spirit and from a far different
motive we of the American Church are also bidden
to look unto the rock whence we are hewn. And
we are assured that we have not far to travel ere
we reach that rock. We are sometimes told that y
our Church had no existence before Luther and
the sixteenth century ; that Henry VI IL of Eng-
land was our kingly but far from respectable
founder and Queen Elizabeth our royal patron ;
and that thus were remarkably fulfilled for us the
prophetic words : '' Kings shall be your nursing
fathers, and Queens your nursing mothers." We
are thus given to understand that as a Church we
have no history before the sixteenth century ; that
we are only disobedient and gainsaying children
of the Church of Rome, our spiritual mother,
upon whom we turned our back at the time of the
so-called Reformation in England ; and that conse-
quently we are only a sect of yesterday, having
no rightful connection with the ancient Catholic
Church of Christ of which we have fondly but
vainly supposed ourselves to be a part.
THE CHANNEL OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY 1 9
Marvellous as it may seem to many of us there
are doubtless persons who as sincerely and stead-
fastly believe all this as they believe the Gospel
itself. But we have not so read history. What-
ever may be said of the Anglo-American Church,
this at least can never be said, with any show of
truth, that it was ever a part of the Roman Church ;
and this for the best of all reasons. The Roman
Church itself in Britain is but a new creation. It
had no existence there at all until it was estab-
lished by Pius V. in 1570, in the reign of Queen
Elizabeth. It is only what it has been aptly styled
by the present Archbishop of Canterbury, ^' the
new Italian Mission," and as such is merely one of
the latest born of the sects which trouble the
peace of the ancient national Chuixh of the land,
having no more connection with that old historic
Church than it has with, say the Church on the
Malabar coast of India, or the Moravian settle-
ments on the Labrador.
Now we do not propose to make mere asser-
tions of what we believe. We are prepared to
submit evidence. The truth is afraid of nothing.
IVe have not that dread of history which found ex-
pression in the well-known utterance of a Roman
cardinal : '* Thank God we have done with history."
20 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
We have not done with history, and we do not
propose that its teachings shall be ignored. To
every one who is laboring vnider the delusion that
the American Church is a thing of yesterday, and
bids us look back to our rock, we are ready to
reply in the spirit of one of old : Hast thou ap-
pealed unto history ? Unto history shalt thou go.
Look unto the rock whence ye are heivn. Our
rock is Britain. We are not unmindful of the
bond which unites us to the Church of the Apos-
tles in Jerusalem ; not a bond merely of sympathy
and brotherly love, but one of visible and organic
continuity. We have an actual share in the events
of the upper room and in the doings of the infant
Church. We claim a vital interest in the first ser-
mon ever preached, the first synod held, the first
Gentile converts gathered in. We think of those
things as the very beginnings of our Christianity,
the first-fruits of our Church. But thinking mere-
ly of our separate national and ecclesiastical ex-
istence as but one portion of the holy Catholic
Church, we look to Britain as the rock whence
we are hewn, as the rock from whence flows to
us that living stream which makes glad the city
of God.
Now what Britain was in those early days we
THE CHANNEL OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY 21
well know. Covered with dense forests through
which wild beasts roamed and sought their prey,
the country presented much the same appearance
as many a wild and uncivilized land to-day. The
inhabitants, clothed in skins and miserably shel-
tered, were ruled by religious teachers called
Druids, whose religion comprised belief in a Su-
preme Deity, and the immortality and transmi-
gration of souls. At times sacrifices were offered
in open-air temples, surrounded by groves of oak-
trees or circles of immense stones. On national
occasions the Druids made immense images of
wicker-work, which they filled with unfortunate
human beings and barbarously offered up as burnt-
offerings.
It is some seventeen or eighteen years since I
stood within one of these open-air temples in Wilt-
shire, on Salisbury Plain. The sight was solemn
and even weird in the extreme. For miles around
extended the absolutely level plain. Far off in
one direction one could see the huge mounds
which are said to have been the burying-places
of British chiefs. Looking out over that lonely
plain one felt himself carried back two thousand
years. There, in an almost perfect circle, were
stones so ponderous and vast that one could but
22 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
wonder by what means they had been transported
across that grassy plain. These stones, oblong
in shape, were standing on end ; whilst across the
tops of some of them still rested similar stones,
though some were fallen to the ground. A short
distance away was to be seen one stone standing
all alone in solitary state and grandeur, and the
old shepherd who watched the place informed us
that once every year in the days of the Druids,
when the sun's rays first gilded the top of that
stone as seen from a certain point within the
temple, the dreadful sacrifices began and the air
was filled with the shrieks of dying men.
But the day came when the reign of the Druids
was over. In the year of Our Lord 43, Claudius
Caesar invaded Britain, and soon afterward the
Druids were swept away. In the track of the
Roman legions, there followed Christian mission-
aries. The sounds of war, the shouts of them that
strive for the mastery, and the scenes of blood-
shed were followed by the Gospel of Peace :
*' the Julian spear
A way first opened, and with Roman chains
The tidings came of Jesus crucified."
It was, indeed, a blessed change, and destined
THE CHANNEL OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY 23
to work far greater changes and accomplish far
more lasting and glorious results. Well may
every Christian joyfully repeat after the prophet
the words which occur in the very next chapter :
" How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet
of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth
peace ; that bringeth good tidings of good, that
publisheth salvation ; that saith unto Zion, Thy
God reigneth ! "
Now WHERE did these first preachers of the
Gospel in Britain come from and WHO were they?
The question has been often asked and never an-
swered satisfactorily. It is, indeed, a hard ques-
tion. We must frankly own that the story of
these first missionaries is wrapped, as the tops of
some of our lofty mountains are wrapped, in an
impenetrable shroud of mists and clouds. There
are traditions, some of them very beautiful, which
tell us of those early days. Would that we could
implicitly believe them ! Like the will -of -the -
wisp, they shine out of the thick darkness, and
we fain would follow them ; but we dare not. We
cannot trust them. Yet we are glad to have
them ; they may be true, and if so, lovely indeed
is the story of the introduction of Christianity
into Britain.
24 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
But whether true or not, we feel that they pro-
claim one thing with no uncertain voice ; they tell
of the early founding of the Church there. They
show how the Church was planted at a time when,
if not the very apostles themselves, at least some
taught directly by them were the missionary he-
roes of the Church.
The traveller standing on the spot where
" The castled crag of Drachenfels
Looks o'er the wide and winding Rhine,"
sees a beautiful sight. Far below at his feet lies
the Rhine, and as he looks down the river he sees
its stream, swollen high by the Moselle, which
mingles itself with its waters from where Coblent":
stands beneath the frowning fortress of Ehren-
breitstein, sweeping past the city of Bonn, with
its university and time-worn castles, and on by Co-
logne, whose cathedral is one of the noblest speci-
mens of Gothic architecture in Europe, on and on
until it falls at length as one mighty river into
the boundless sea. But as he looks in the op-
posite direction whence the river takes its rise,
different, but still strikingly beautiful, is the
scene. Far, far away, like gleaming coils of sil-
ver, the river is lying, until one can follow its
THE CHANNEL OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY 2 5
course no farther. On the distant horizon the
mists gather and no eye can pierce them, no glass
can shorten the distance or show what lies be-
yond those thin mists which gather in the far-off
distance. Only in thought can the traveller fol-
low the course of the stream till he stands in
fancy before its rocky bed, far up in the everlast-
ing hills, whence, clear as crystal, it issues forth,
till, by and by, gathering force and volume, it be-
comes the mighty river, passing towering fortress
and lowly cottage, passing busy city and quiet
hamlet till it falls into the sea. So methinks it is
with the British Church. We can follow it for a
while as it rolls past, first, this ancient castle, and
then that bold headland — but there comes a time
and a place where we can follow it no farther.
But the purity of the source we cannot doubt, as
we behold the river itself.
We admit, then, that the origin of the British
Church is lost amid the mists and shadows of tra-
ditions. What are these traditions? It may be
sufficient for our purpose to mention two.
I. There is the story, of which most people who
know anything at all about ecclesiastical history
have heard, that St. Paul himself was the first
preacher of the Gospel in Britain. Between St.
26 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
Paul's first and second imprisonments at Rome
there are eight years of the Apostle's life during
which the Acts of the Apostles fail to reveal to us
the scene of his apostolic labors. When we read
St. Paul's letter to the Romans we see that he pur-
posed a visit into Spain. And there are not want-
ing indications in the New Testament itself that
this visit was paid, and that it was extended even
into Gaul. But that he ever paid a visit, or ever
meditated a visit, to the islands beyond, we have,
of course, not the slightest indication in the New
Testament. How then came the tradition (that he
he did) to be so widely spread and so universally
believed? It is due in part to the fact that Cle-
ment of Rome (whom the Roman Catholics claim
as an infallible Pope) expressly says: "Our be-
loved brother Paul preached the Gospel in the ut-
most bounds of the west ; " and in part to the fact
that Claudia and Pudens and Linus, mentioned
by St. Paul in his letter to Timothy, are thought
to have been British Christians. There is certainly
nothing impossible in the tradition, but we build
nothing upon it. Yet it is infinitely more worthy
of belief than the tradition, resting upon no foun-
dation at all, that St. Peter was ever Bishop of
Rome.
THE CHANNEL OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY 2/
2. On a par with the fond delusion of our
Roman brethren that St. Peter was their first
Bishop, is the tradition which tells us that Joseph
of Arimathea was the father of British Christi-
anity. The Jews, it is said, having a special en-
mity against SS. Philip, Lazarus, Martha, Mary,
and Joseph of Arimathea, banished them. In
their exile they arrived at Marseilles, where SS.
Philip and Lazarus remained, but St. Joseph was
sent, with twelve companions and the holy women,
to Britain. They landed on the southwest coast
and made their way to Avalon, now Glastonbury,
bearing with them the Holy Grail {i.e., the cup or
chalice wherein Our Lord consecrated the wine
and water at the institution of the Eucharist).
Here they preached to the people, and St. Joseph,
to confirm the truthfulness of their preaching,
stuck into the ground his staff of thorn, which
forthwith bloomed like Aaron's rod, and grew
into a tree, which thereafter blossomed at every
Christmas season. Whereupon, Ave are told, the
king gave them that land and allowed them to
settle there. They at once built a church in honor
of the Virgin Mary, out of wattles and wreathed
twigs, which they plastered with mud. No one,
of course, believes all this mythical story, but this
28 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
much is certain that no place in England has ever
attempted to rival Glastonbury as the site of the
first permanent Christian settlement.
Yet there is a curious incident connected with
this legend. At the Councils of Pisa and Con-
stance and Basle the question of precedence be-
tween English and French ambassadors was con-
stantly coming up, and finally was decided in
favor of the English ambassador, on the ground
that the English traced their Christianity to Jo-
seph of Arimathea, who came earlier to Britain
than Dionysius the Areopagite came to France.
We may now leave the realm of tradition and
come to actual historical testimony. It is a rec-
ognized fact to-day that the earliest unquestion-
able statement of the existence of Christianity in
Britain is in TertuUian's work against the Jews.
This great African apologist of Christianity wrote,
about A.D. 207, as follows : " For in whom else
have all nations believed but in Christ ? Parthians,
Medes, Elamites, all the coasts of Spain, the vari-
ous nations of Gaul, and the portions of Britain
inaccessible to Rome, but now subject to Christ."
Gildas, the historian of the British Church, who
lived early in the sixth century, after describing
the defeat of the Druids, a.d. 61, immediately goes
THE CHANNEL OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY 29
on to say, '' In the meantime Christ, the true Sun,
for the first time cast his rays, />., the knowledge
of his laws, on this island." Here we have a de-
finite date assigned. Compare the statements of
TertuUian and Gildas, and remember that in A.D.
61, twenty years after London was founded, Lon-
don was a flourishing town, with commerce that
connected the Thames with the Mediterranean,
and you will see that it is quite possible that the
true faith could be published in Britain and find
lodging and growth before the first century had
run its course.
The veil which hides from our view the early
British Church, thus partially lifted, is not again,
even in part, uplifted until after the third cen-
tury. What the national history of the Church
was in that silent period we know not ; but the
fourth century opens with as grand and touching
a scene as is to be witnessed in all the history of
the Church of God.
" Lament ! for Diocletian's fiery sword
Works busy as the lightning ! "
During the Diocletian persecution, which reached
as far as the shores of Britain, Alban, a pagan,
a citizen of Verulam, sheltered in his house a
30 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
Christian priest who was fleeing from his perse-
cutors. He had taken into his house an angel
unawares. The sight of the good man's life, his
watchings and prayers, so impressed Alban that
he became a convert. On its becoming known
where the priest was concealed, soldiers were
sent to Alban's cottage ; but Alban, putting on the
priest's cloak, met the soldiers at the door and
gave himself up into their hands, declaring him-
self to be a Christian, whilst the priest made good
his escape. On being brought before the magis-
trate he was ordered to sacrifice, but this he re-
fused to do, and declaring himself to be a Chris-
tian he was ordered to execution. A short dis-
tance from the cit}^ wall he was beheaded, the first
martyr of the Church of God in Britain.
" Self-offered victim for his friend he died,
And for the Faith."
It is remarkable that the first martyr in Britain
should thus have been not a priest or a bishop,
but a layman, the first of a noble army.
On the spot where St. Alban died the Christian
Britons subsequently erected a church to his
memory, which was replaced, as centuries rolled
by, with larger and more commodious structures.
THE CHANNEL OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY 3 1
Saxons and Danes, as they became Christians,
each strove to outvie their predecessors in the
honor done to the memory of Britain's proto-
martyr. To - day, upon that spot, St. Alban's
Cathedral stands, and so connects the English
Church of the present age with that first martyr-
dom in her distant past.
Of the presence of Bishops from Britain at the
Councils of Aries and Sardica, in the fourth cen-
tury, and of the fact that they were invited to be
present at the Nicene Council, which gave us the
Nicene Creed, we may not now speak ; nor of the
fact that they were jealous with a godly jealousy
for the Faith once for all delivered to the saints,
and refused to hearken to the voice of the charmer,
charm he never so wisely. Nor can we further
speak now of the glorious missionary work of
the British Church, and of how St. Patrick, the
Apostle of Ireland, was a British clergyman and
son of a British clergyman — these things we must
speak of another time. To the average Church-
man the fact that there was a British Church in
the first century may come as a revelation. His-
tory, especially Church history, has been so per-
sistently perverted that many even of our Church's
own sons and daughters are not prepared to hear
32 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
of any Church in Britain until the arrival of the
Roman missionary, Augustine, at the close of the
sixth century. Let such remember that we are
dealing with sober facts. It may suit the pur-
poses of controversial writers to ignore alto-
gether some great events and to magnify others,
and call such distorted teaching history ; but we
have no such custom, neither the Church of
God.
There is in Hampton Court Palace Gardens, in
England, a vine. It is the oldest vine in that coun-
try, some say in the world. Year after year it
bears its clusters of grapes, and last year there
were some 1,200 clusters clinging to its venerable
branches. It has its roots far down in the ground,
reaching out even to the river Thames, from
whence it draws its nourishment and strength.
This vine is a true type of the British Church ;
that, too, is bringing forth more fruit in its age,
and is fat and well liking. It is still flourishing
like a palm-tree and spreading abroad like a cedar
in Libanus. Of that vine we might say unto God
with the Psalmist: ''Thou hast brought a vine
out of Egypt ; thou hast cast out the heathen and
planted it. Thou madest room for it ; and when
it had taken root it filled the land. The hills were
THE CHANNEL OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY 33
covered with the shadow of it and the boughs
thereof were like the goodly cedar-trees. She
stretched out her branches unto the sea, and her
boughs unto the river."
III.
OUR FIRST MISSIONARY HEROES, SS.
PATRICK AND COLUMBA
III.
OUR FIRST MISSIONARY HEROES, SS.
PATRICK AND COLUMBA
" And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the
firmament ; and they that turn many to righteousness as the
stars for ever and ever." — Daniel xii. 3.
Most interesting it is to follow the fortunes of
the Church in the British isles from the martyr-
dom of Alban to the coming of the monk Augus-
tine ; a period extending from the beginning of
the fourth century to the end of the sixth — a sec-
ond period of three hundred years.
This period may be called the missionary age
of the early Church in the British isles, wherein
two names stand out and shine like beacon-lights,
proclaiming that those who bore them were true
princes of the Church of God, true leaders of the
spiritual Israel. These are St. Patrick, the Apos-
tle of Ireland, and St. Columba, the Apostle of
Scotland ; both of them saints who had been bap-
tized, taught, and catechised in the old Church
SS LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
of the land ; saints, therefore, not of any foreign
Church but of that old Church in the British
isles which owed allegiance to none save to the
Universal Bishop, the one Shepherd of our souls,
Christ our Lord. Never did men toil more fer-
vently than these for the spread of the kingdom
of Christ on earth, and never did men, since the
days of St. Paul, have truer, grander, or more de-
servedly earned success than these. Of all men
they might have been cheered and strengthened
and have found grace to persevere in those words
of the Prophet Daniel : "And they that be wise
shall shine as the brightness of the firmament ; and
they that turn many to righteousness as the stars
for ever and ever."
But that age was distinguished for another thing,
it was the age ol Councils. Whilst the persecu-
tions lasted, it had been impossible to hold public
Councils. But with the close of Diocletian's per-
secution, the Church had rest. Then it was that
the Christians had no longer any need to hide
themselves in dens and caves of the earth — they
no longer carried their lives in their hands — they
began openly to organize themselves for work.
Accordingly, we shall find that, following the ex-
ample of the Apostles and Elders who came to-
OUR FIRST MISSIONARY HEROES 39
gather to Jerusalem to deliberate concerning the
common welfare, the scattered Churches began to
come together again to hold Councils. In these
Councils the Church in Britain, as a true branch
of Christ's Holy Apostolic Church, had always
open and undisputed right of representation.
In the year 3 14 such a Council was held in Aries,
in Gaul, partly to consider the question of the
growing Donatist schism in Africa, and partly to
determine what was to be done with those timid
disciples who had compromised their faith in the
late persecutions. In the records of that Council
we find the names of three Bishops from Britain, —
Eborius, Bishop of York ; Restitutus, Bishop of
London; and Adelphius, Bishop of Colonia Civi-
tate Londinensium, which some have assumed to
be Colchester, others Lincoln, and others Caer-
leon-on-Usk in Wales.
In 325 a great General Council of the Church
was held at Nicea vuider the presidency of Con-
stantine, the first Christian emperor — the first
Ecclesiastical Council in which the civil authority
took part. This was the Council which gave us
the substance of the Nicene Creed. No Bishops
from Britain were present at that Council; but
they had been invited, and although not present
40 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
they had found some means of giving their vote,
for in a letter of Constantine's, now extant, the
Emperor mentions the British Bishops as sub-
scribing to the Creed and to the ruling of the
Council.
Moreover, in 347, when the Council of Sardica
was held, the representatives of the British Bish-
ops were present, for Athanasius mentions that
they supported him against the errors of the
Arians, who were, notwithstanding the Council
of Nicea, at that time in great favor at Constan-
tinople.
It is mainly from such plain historical and un-
questioned facts that we know the Church of
Britain was not only an orthodox and indepen-
dent national Church at that time, but was recog-
nized as such by the Church at large. Otherwise
the Church at this period is like a landscape
wrapped in fog, across which some fitful lights
irregularly gleam. Of its Episcopal succession
and its internal organization and methods of work
we really know very little. We know that it had
its sacred edifices at Canterbury, at Caerleon, and
at Glastonbury. A few relics have been found
which plainly point to the Christianity of that
period. Here and there some Christian mono-
OUR FIRST MISSIONARY HEROES 41
gram has been found, or coin bearing the Alpha
and Omega, and here and there a gravestone re-
cording the fact that a Christian man once slept
below. How far, however, that Church had really
occupied the land for Christ is now hidden from
us. It had, indeed, as we have seen, sought to
take possession ; but it is a question how far it
had expelled the Canaanite and the Perizzite
from the land. How far, too, that ancient Church
brought the heathen soldiers of Rome to believe
in Christ, how far it leavened the army, not with
the old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice
and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread
of sincerity and truth, this we do not know. But
we may well believe that the Church which tra-
dition tells us gave Linus to be the first Bishop of
Rome, did do all that it could to influence the
common soldiers to believe in Christ ; and it may
be that when the time came that those soldiers
had to return to Italy to defend the Imperial
City itself against the Gothic invader, many re-
turned as servants of the King of Kings and the
Lord of Lords ; and that, as such, they would re-
joice to tell their comrades and their friends what
they had learned by the camp-fires in distant
Britain.
42 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
The Roman legions were withdrawn in 410,
and Britain then practically ceased to be a part
of the Roman Empire. But alas for the British
Church ! Blood was again to flow. Ere half a
century had passed away the pagan Angles came,
and they and their kindred Saxons continued
coming for the next one hundred and fifty years.
Fiercely they fought with the old inhabitants of
the land for the mastery, and little by little they
conquered and gained the country for them-
selves. To the British Christians the evil days
of Diocletian seemed to have returned. The ad-
vance of the pagans was marked everywhere by
the burning of Christian sanctuaries and the
slaughter of Bishops, ministers, and people, until
the greater part of the land was again reduced
to paganism.
But we must not suppose that the effect of the
Anglo-Saxon invasion was to utterly destroy the
British Church. It was very far from doing that.
Whilst it did indeed seriously cripple the Church,
and even in certain places entirely destroy it, yet
it did not uproot it from the land. Its candle-
stick was not taken away. We need no better
proof of this than the fact that when, two cen-
turies later, Augustine came to preach the Gospel
OUR FIRST MISSIONARY HEROES 43
to the Angles, he discovered a fully organized
Church in the western parts, whither the Chris-
tian Britons had been driven by the heathen, and
where they still lived unconquered by them. If
we needed more proof we should find it in the
fact that, in a conference with seven Bishops of
this Church, St. Augustine made certain propo-
sals to them which they rejected, on the express
ground that he claimed, as if a superior, unwar-
ranted lordship over them.
The natural result of the Saxon invasion v/as
to isolate the British Church from the Churches
in Europe by a wedge of heathenism. Probably
this very fact contributed more than aught else
to preserve the sturdy independence of that
Church. Certain, however, it is, that it was an
independent national Church, having its own
Liturgy, its own version of the Bible, different
from the Vulgate, its own mode of administering
Baptism, keeping Easter, and of Consecrating
Churches and Bishops. It was so unlike, in many
of its customs and ceremonies, anything seen
either in the Churches of France or Italy, that its
origin must be looked for elsewhere than from
Western Christendom.
We come now to a question of great interest :
44 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
Was this ancient British Church a missionary
Church ? We reply it was ; though it carried on
no missionary work among the pagans, and for the
best of reasons, because no Briton could have
gone among them with any prospect of coming
back alive. Yet notwithstanding this, it was
filled with that missionary spirit which rests not
until it has done something for Christ. But had
that British Church done no more than give St.
Patrick to the work, it had done much ; for never
was there a more faithful and devoted missionary
than he. He it is who is so universally recog-
nized as the Apostle of Ireland ; and of his mis-
sion, which is one of the most interesting events
in Church history, we happily possess most
trustworthy documents.
The principal of these records is the work
composed by St. Patrick himself in his old age,
and addressed to the people of Ireland and en-
titled his Confession; a kind of profession of
faith. This profession of faith he wrote as a
brief memoir of his own ministry and life, and
also as a public and thankful acknowledgment
to God for the manifold mercies vouchsafed to
him. He intended by means of it that all men
should know what he had taught and done, and
OUR FIRST MISSIONARY HEROES 45
that all might know that though he had been
permitted to labor in Ireland for many years, and
had baptized many thousands there, and had
planted many churches in that country, yet he
claimed no honor to himself, but ascribed all the
glory to God.
Now who was this man of whom it might be
truthfully said, " He was a good man, and full of
the Holy Ghost." He was not an Irishman, he
was not an Italian. His baptismal name of Suc-
cath points to Celtic origin. He tells us that his
father and his grandfather were clergymen, and
his birthplace is generally supposed to have been
on the banks of the Clyde, in Scotland, between
Dumbarton and Glasgow, though some suppose
that he was born in France. Certainly he was
either born in Scotland or France, but the proba-
bility is in favor of Scotland, and for this reason :
When sixteen years of age he was captured by
pirates and carried to the north of Ireland, where
he was sold as a slave. Until his twenty-third
year he remained the slave of a heathen master in
Ireland. He speaks in his Confession of his own
course at that time. '' I wandered as a shepherd,"
he says, " drenched by rains and chilled by dews
and frost." But in his twentj^-third year he es-
46 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
caped and returned to his native land. He
would not, however, remain there. He had seen
the people of Ireland scattered like sheep with-
out a shepherd, and his heart was moved toward
them ; and so after some years of preparation he
received the Holy Orders of Deacon, Priest, and
Bishop, and about the year of Our Lord 430, with
a noble Christian forgetfulness of the past, and a
spirit of Christian self-sacrifice, he went back to
preach the Gospel in the land where he had been
an exile and a slave. There he lived the remainder
of his 3^ears, and there he died. For sixty years
he toiled, never quitting the field, and at last, full
of labors and of years, like a reaper with his
sheaves around him, he fell asleep in Christ.
Truly "they that be wise shall shine as the
brightness of the firmament, and they that turn
many to righteousness as the stars for ever and
ever."
We do not wonder that another Church, that of
Rome, whom he never knew, has claimed him as
her son, for his praise is in all the Churches. But
did St. Patrick never know the Church of Rome ?
He had heard of her, of course, but he owed
nothing to her, and into his life she never en-
tered. In his Confession he never mentions hen
OUR FIRST MISSIONARY HEROES 47
He mentions the clergy of Britain ; he mentions
the clergy of France ; he mentions the clergy ot
Ireland ; but he never mentions the clergy of
Rome, and the name of Rome never once occurs
in St. Patrick's own writings and work.
This, however, is not all. Rome evidently did
not know St. Patrick. Let me show this. Our
Roman Catholic brethren claim that he was sent
to Ireland by Celestine, in his time Bishop of
Rome. Well, in the time of Celestine, Prosper
Aquitanus lived. He composed the " Annals of
the Church." Now /ic never mentions St. Patrick
in his history, but he does mention Palladius, a
missionary whom Celestine sent to Ireland one
year before St. Patrick went there, and who was a
complete failure, giving up his work almost at
once and leaving the country. Patrick, on the
other hand, was a glorious success, and became
Ireland's Apostle. Singular, is it not, that the
Roman historian should tell us all about the poor
failure of Palladius, and not say anything about
the apostolic St. Patrick, if St. Patrick really had
come from Rome, or ever been commissioned by
her?
Again, to speak of our own records. The most
ancient of English Church historians is the Vener-
48 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
able Bede, who was born a.d. 672, less than two
centuries after St. Patrick's death. He was sup-
plied with much material from the archives of
Rome, but nevertheless he never mentions St.
Patrick. Do we ask why ? The reason is evi-
dent. Patrick was not one of the Roman cler-
gy. He was a missionary from the old British
Church !
Again, another great missionary was St. Co-
lumba, who is justly regarded as the Apostle of
the Highlands and Western Isles of Scotland.
He was of Ireland's ancient line of kings, and
preached the gospel in Northern Britain thirty
years before Augustine landed in England.
Banished from Ireland, he, with twelve com-
panions, crossed the sea to Scotland. They
landed on the little island of lona, which King
Colman, a kinsman of Columba, gave him to be
used for religious purposes. Here a monastery
was founded, to which the whole of Northern
Scotland, and the isles surrounding it, owe their
first knowledge of Christianit}^ Ireland, in the
person of Columba, was thus magnificently re-
paying her debt to Britain for her St. Patrick. No
place on earth outside the Holy Land is richer in
sacred associations than that spot from whence
OUR FIRST MISSIONARY HEROES 49
radiated the rays of Christian teaching for many
a century to come.
" The pilgrim at lona's shrine
Forgets his journey's toil,
As faith rekindles in his breast
On that inspiring soil."
The words of Columba, spoken but a few hours
before he died, have been signally fulfilled. " To
this place, little and poor though it be, there shall
come great honor, not only from Scottish kings
and people, but from barbarians and foreign na-
tions, and from the saints of the other Churches
also." It was a true prophecy. The sanctity of
the place brought thither for burial not merely
kings of the British and Celtic people, but even
kings of Spain and Norway. Here Duncan Avas
buried, whom Macbeth murdered ; for he was
carried, as Shakespeare tells us, to Colmes Kill,
the sacred storehouse of his predecessors and
guardian of their bones.
Columba's end was singularly beautiful ; it re-
minds us of the last hours of Bede. Coming from
the hill where he had delivered his prophecy con-
cerning the future greatness of lona, it is related
that he entered the monastery to die. He could
4
50 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
only half finish the verse of the Psalter he was
copying : " They that seek the Lord shall want no
manner of thing that is good ; " and on that Sun-
day morning, June 7, A.D. 597, having hastened
to the matins of the festival, he died before the
altar, among his spiritual children, who had hur-
ried to him in the dim light before the. dawn to
obtain his last blessing. His voice was gone and
there was no power in his right hand. But, raised
by another, he made the sign of the cross, and
passed into the visible presence of his Lord, to re-
ceive the reward of those who turn many to
righteousness.
As St. Patrick's was the noblest and most fruit-
ful missionary career ever accomplished in Ire-
land, so in like manner St. Columba's was the
noblest ever accomplished in Scotland.
Was it a strange coincidence that, whilst this
great missionary (to use his own words) " was en-
tering on the way of his fathers," another mission-
ary was beginning his work to the southward?
The founder of lona died on the 7th of June ; and
on the 14th of April, in the same year, the Roman
missionary Augustine had landed on the southern
coast to join in the same holy work, and to leave
behind him the glory of an apostolic example.
OUR FIRST MISSIONARY HEROES 5 1
We have spoken of the Church in Britain and
of the Church in Ireland. Sister Churches were
they, working side by side ; together working in
God's cause, together possessing God's blessing.
Like the two olive-trees Zechariah saw in his
vision, so were these two Churches. *'And the
angel that talked with me came again, and waked
me, as a man that is wakened out of his sleep."
'' Then answered I, and said unto him. What are
these two olive-trees upon the right side of the
candlestick, and upon the left side thereof?"
" And he answered me and said, Knowest thou
not what these be?" ''Then said he, These are
the two anointed ones, that stand by the Lord
of the whole earth."
IV.
THE FIRST ITALIAN MISSION TO
ENGLAND, IN THE SIXTH CENTURY
IV.
THE FIRST ITALIAN MISSION TO
ENGLAND, IN THE SIXTH CENTURY
" Out of Zion went forth the law, and the word of the Lord
from Jerusalem." — Isaiah, xi. 3.
We have hitherto brought down our studies in
early British Church history to the end of the
sixth century. The state of the British Church
at the close of that period was briefly as. follows :
In the greater part of what we now* call England,
where the Saxons had obtained possession, Chris-
tianity had practically perished. But in the un-
conquered portions of the land, all along the west-
ern seaboard, from Cornwall to the Lowlands of
Scotland, the Christian Church held possession.
There Bishops and clergy still ministered to their
people, and the sacrifice of prayer and praise was
offered as beforetimes. Across the Channel, in
Ireland, mainly through the preaching of the
apostolic missionary St. Patrick, the Church had
gained some of her brightest triumphs and many
tribes had been won for Christ ; whilst in Scot-
56 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
land again, the great Irish -born St. Columba
had carried the knowledge of Christ crucified
northward, far to the Highlands and through all
the western Isles, fulfilling the beautiful prophecy
of Isaiah (li. 5) : " The isles shall wait upon me,
and on mine arm shall they trust."
But zealous as it was for Christ, that old British
Church had done nothing to convert the pagan
invaders of their land. Side by side for one hun-
dred and fifty years Christian Britons and pagan
Saxons lived, and during all that time the Saxons
might have justly exclaimed, " No man cares for
our souls." But in the sixth century Christian
teachers appeared on the southern coast to lead
the Saxons to kneel at the feet of Him whom
once, like St. Paul, they had cruelly persecuted.
These missionaries were Augustine, the Bene-
dictine monk, and his forty companions, sent by
Gregory the Great, 'Bishop of Rome.
May we recall the well-known story which tells
of the sending of these missionaries by Gregory?
Humanly speaking Augustine would never have
come at all had it not been for one of those oc-
currences which men speak of as chance, but in
which we can often see God's providential hand.
You doubtless know the incident well. The story
THE FIRST ITALIAN MISSION TO ENGLAND 5/
of it is at once old and yet ever fresh. There was
the market-place at Rome ; among bales of mer-
chandise, newly arrived, there were three boys to
be sold as slaves. Gregory, the future Bishop,
passing through the market-place was attracted
by the sight of these boys, with their fair com-
plexions and light flaxen hair, so unlike the dark
olive skins and jet black hair of the Italians.
" What is the name of the nation from which
these boys are brought ? " asked Gregory of the
trader. " They are Angles/' is the reply. In po-
etic fancy the good Gregory answers : " Rightly
are they called Angles for their faces are the faces
of Angels and they ought to be fellow-heirs with
the angels of heaven." Such is the legend.
Years passed away, but Gregory never forgot
that pathetic sight in the market-place. He of-
ten thought of those little slave bo3^s. They had
made an impression on his mind which could not
be effaced. Vividly had they made him realize
the needs of their nation, and often in the night-
time would there arise in his dreams one like the
man of Macedon, who said : '' Come over and
help us ; " nay not one voice but many :
" Thousand voices, thousand voices,
Called him o'er the waters blue."
$8 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
At length he could resist no longer the plead-
ing of those voices, and he gave himself for the
work. But a man so beloved as he was the Ro-
man people could ill spare, and they refused to
let him go. Disappointed for the time his pur-
pose never faltered, directly or indirectly he
WOULD preach the Gospel in the land of the
Angles. Not till six years had elapsed, however,
could he fulfil his heart's desire, and then the way
was opened before him ; for he had become Bishop
of Rome, and, as such, one of his first acts was to
summon a certain Benedictine monk, named Au-
gustine, to do what he himself had so earnestly
longed to do, and carry the Gospel to the isles of
the west. We do not marvel that Augustine was
loth to exchange the fair Italian skies and his
peaceful monastic life for the wandering life of a
missionary among savage Saxons. But he had to
deal with a m^an who was as capable as he was
good, and the Benedictine rule called for implicit
obedience. Augustine therefore yielded, and on
April 14, 597, he, with forty companions, crossed
the Channel and stood on English soil. The sight
of the slave boys at Rome was now to bear its
fruit at last. Rome, which had torn those boys
from their homes, had now sent men to their
THE FIRST ITALIAN MISSION TO ENGLAND 59
fatherland to free those who dwelt therein from
the slavery of sin and heathenism. It was a noble
recompense to make.
The first care of Augustine and his fellow-mis-
sionaries was to send from the Isle of Thanet,
where they had landed, their homage to the
King of Kent. This was Ethelbert, King of the
Jutes. They were come, they said, from Rome,
with the best of all messages, and, if he would ac-
cept it, he would undoubtedly insure for him-
self an everlasting kingdom. The heathen king
warily replied that he would come and see them :
meanwhile they were to remain on the Isle of
Thanet. There, when at the appointed time and
place Ethelbert and his thanes had taken their
seats, the missionaries approached. As they
came into the presence of the king they raised
aloft a silver cross, and a board on which was
painted a figure of The Crucified. And then by
means of a Gallic interpreter Augustine delivered
his message. He told, said a Saxon homilist long
after, how the tender-hearted Jesus by His throes
had redeemed the sinful world, and had opened
the kingdom of heaven to all believers.
The religion he heard thus preached by Au-
gustine could not have been entirely new to him,
60 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
for his queen was a Christian, and she and her
chaplain had long worshipped God in the lit-
tle British chapel on the slopes of St. Martin's
Hill, just outside the city of Canterbury. But
Ethelbert had never before seen his wife's faith
represented with such dignity and solemnity,
and it is evident that he was most favorably im-
pressed. He at once gave the missionaries per-
mission to proceed to Canterbury, and there carry
out all that lay in their hearts. In Ascension
week, 597, Augustine for the first time saw the
city which was destined to be the seat of his
archbishopric, and of all future Archbishops of
Canterbur}^ The desire seized him to claim the
city for Christ. A procession was formed, the
cross was again uplifted, and with it " a like-
ness of the great King, Our Lord," and he and
his companions entered Canterbury singing :
" Turn from this cit}^ O Lord, Thine anger
and wrath, and turn it from Thy holy house,
for we have sinned."
Thus was inaugurated the foundation of the
Church among the Saxons. Passing into the heart
of the city through a long line of curious Jutes,
who came out of their houses to look at the dark
strangers, they made their home near to a hea-
THE FIRST ITALIAN MISSION TO ENGLAND 6 1
then temple, which stood ahnost on the ground
where now stands the Cathedral Church of Can-
terbury. Here they dwelt, giving themselves to
frequent prayers, watching, and fasting, preach-
ing to all within their reach. " What need we say
more," says Bede ; " some believed and were bap-
tized, admiring the simplicity of their blameless
life and the sweetness of their heavenly teaching."
The language of the historian forcibly reminds
us of the summing up by an inspired writer in a
very similar case, " And some believed the things
which were spoken, and some believed not."
On June first following, not quite one year
after they arrived, their cup of joy was full to
overflowing. Whether won by the earnest per-
suasions of Bertha, his queen, or convinced by
the life and teaching of the missionaries, Ethel-
bert offered himself for baptism. His example
told on his subjects, and from that day the success
of the mission seemed assured. Alas ! how little
can we foresee the future. When the great mis-
sionary and philanthropist Livingstone returned
from Africa to tell of what he had seen there,
fields white already to harvest, only waiting for
the coming of the reapers, he created so much
enthusiasm in Ens^land that after a crowded
62 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
meeting at Cambridge one was heard to say :
^' I am afraid of this ; most successful undertak-
ings have had less auspicious beginnings." So
here Augustine might have said, " I am afraid of
this." It may be that a fear did arise in his heart
that what he saw would be as the morning dew.
But so far all went merry as a marriage-bell, and
no warning voice was heard.
So ends the first scene in the great drama.
Soon afterward Augustine passed over to France,
where, on the i6th November following, he was
consecrated a Bishop, at the hands of Bishops of
the national Church of Gaul. On his return home
he found a multitude of new proselytes, more than
ten thousand Kentish men having been baptized
in his absence. Such successes as these must
have reminded the missionaries of the first great
Pentecostal day. Inspired, doubtless, by the feel-
ing that God was with them, Augustine sought to
build up not only the grand spiritual temple of
living souls, but a visible dwelling-place of the
Most High, which should be not only an outward
token of the work done, but a place where
prayers were wont to be made. Upon Augustine
himself the king had freely bestow^ed his own
royal palace, and it may be that tlie Bishop, like
THE FIRST ITALIAN MISSION TO ENGLAND 63
David of old, could take no rest until he had
found out a place for the temple of the Lord, an
habitation for the mighty God of Jacob. He re-
stored therefore the church which had been built
by Roman Christians, but had afterward been
used by the heathens, and rededicated it " in the
name of the holy Saviour Jesus Christ, our God
and Lord." As the modern pilgrim to Canter-
bury passes through the hop-gardens which
stretch far away on either side of the road, he
sees the spire of the present cathedral, which
marks the spot where the Christ Church of Au-
gustine's foundation originally stood.
Now in order that we may have a distinct idea
of the precise state of Augustine's mission at the
close of the first year of his work, and indeed for
some time afterward, let us assume that Augus-
tine landed not in England, but in the United
States. In that case entering at the southeast his
sphere of work would have been Florida, and his
cathedral city St. Augustine. In that case, too,
he would have found, all along the Pacific coast,
from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico, a fully organ-
ized national Church. Canada he would have
recognized to be in no need of his missionary
labors, for she, too, had her own Church, a branch
■\
64 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
of that same Church which was in existence on
the slopes of the Pacific.
Let us further assume at the time of his landing
in this country that the various States were not
yet in constitutional union, but were often at war
with one another, and that Florida was neither
the greatest nor the most important of them, and
then I think we shall have a good general idea of
the nature, difficulties, and actual sphere of Au-
gustine's work. We can admit that the Church
along the Pacific shore was doing nothing for the
conversion of the States east of the Rocky Moun-
tains, or to second in anyway the efforts of the
missionaries in Florida ; but, on the other hand,
we should require it to be acknowledged that the
Canadian Church was pushing its mission south-
ward over the Eastern and Middle States, and
that these missions were eventually far more suc-
cessful than the missions in Florida, and were in
fact to be their means of salvation in the dark
days which should come upon them.
Which things are an allegory — the United
States answereth to England that then was, Flor-
ida to Kent, the Pacific coast to the British coast
from Cornwall northward, and Canada to Scot-
land. We do not wish to minimize Augustine's
THE FIRST ITALIAN MISSION TO ENGLAND 6$
work. Nor do we. He was the Apostle of Kent.
He planted a mission there which, notwithstand-
ing serious reverses of fortune, took root and bore
its fruit toward the conversion of England. All
honor to him for what he did. He had the true
missionary spirit. He gave himself to the mis-
sionary cause, and died, like Columba and Patrick,
in the harvest - field, laboring to gather in the
sheaves. But as to the nature and extent of his
work, that is adequately and even best described
in the words of the epitaph placed upon his tomb :
" Here rests Augustine, first Lord Archbishop of
Canterbury, who formerly, directed hither by the
blessed Gregory, Pontiff of the city of Rome, and
sustained by God in the working of miracles^
brought over King Ethelbert and his nation from
the worship of idols to the faith of Christ, and
having completed the days of his office in peace,
deceased on the 7th day of the Kalends of June,
in the same King's reign."
How the magnitude and the difficulties of the
work must often have weighed upon Augustine's
mind. How was he to reach the various Anglo-
Saxon kingdoms ? He seemed as far off as ever
from converting the kingdom from whence the
little slaves had come. What could he do for
5
66 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
these and for others with whom as yet he had not
been brought into contact? In the first place, he
felt he needed more men, and in response to an
appeal Gregory sent him four, of whom three
were destined to play no insignificant part in the
story of English Christianity : Mellitus, Justus,
and Paulinus ; and in the second place he made
overtures to the Bishops of the British Church to
join him in reaping the spiritual harvest-fields.
In response to his overtures seven Bishops of
the British Church met Augustine in conference
at a place now known as Augustine's Oak, near
the Severn, not very far from the ancient settle-
ment at Glastonbury. But two cannot walk to-
gether unless they be agreed, and there were
points of difference between him and them which
he deemed necessary first to be settled. Three of
these differences — (a) of keeping Easter; {&) of bap-
tizing; and (c) of wearing the tonsure — were, in
Augustine's judgment, insuperable difficulties in
the way of joint action, and he strenuously urged
the British Bishops to lay aside their own tra-
ditions and to follow those of his own Church as
being more in harmony with the practices of
the Catholic Churches generally throughout the
world.
THE FIRST ITALIAN MISSION TO ENGLAND 6/
The native bishops, however, were not so ready
to give way and adopt the customs of a stranger.
Yet they would not act hastily, and so they asked
for another meeting when these matters might be
finally settled. In the meantime they took coun-
sel with one famed for wisdom. Would he ad-
vise them to adopt the new custom ? The reply
was : " If Augustine be a man of God, follow
him." But how was this to be ascertained ?
" Contrive," said the oracle, " that the stranger
come to the place of meeting before you. If
when you approach he rises to meet you, then be
sure that he is a servant of Christ and listen to
him obediently." They so arranged it. Augus-
tine failed to arise, and they would therefore con-
cede nothing to one in whom they thus thought
abided none of the spirit of Christ. So Augustine
returned to his home in Kent. His first plan had
failed completely.
How fared his other attempt? By Ethelbert's
influence he managed to get Mellitus settled in
London, in the kingdom of Sabert, King of the
East Saxons ; Justus he placed in Rochester, a
Kentish city, not far from his own. Paulinus
went northward. But sad reverses followed the
efforts of all these, and their work was for a time
68 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
as if blotted out. In London, as soon as Sabert
was dead, who had been to Mellitus what Ethel-
bert had been to Augustine, his son drove out
Mellitus, and London returned to its idols, and
for nearly forty years Essex and London were
lost to Christianity. It was almost as bad in
Kent after the deaths of Ethelbert and Augus-
tine. Numbers at once relapsed into paganism,
and even in the city of Canterbury Christianity
seemed about to perish.
We have dwelt at somewhat greater length
than we should otherwise have done on the par-
ticular share Augustine had in the conversion of
\ j England, because there are those who have so ex-
r, aggerated his labors as if from him alone came
' the knowledge of Christianity to the British Isles.
But only those who know but little of the real
facts will venture to speak of him as if he had
been to England what Patrick was to Ireland
^ i and Columba to Scotland. When he died his
'' 1 influence had barely extended beyond the little
kingdom of Kent, and it was not till long after his
death that the event which he desired in vain to
see became an accomplished fact, and the rem-
K nant of the ancient British Church and the Celtic
I Church of the north Avere brouo:ht into union with
THE FIRST ITALIAN MISSION TO ENGLAND 69
the Italian mission, and the scattered Christian
forces in Britain at length were welded into one
harmonious whole. In so far as he contributed to
this grand result we give all praise to Augustine ;
but it must ever be remembered that his whole
work was all done in one extreme corner of Eng-
land, and that after his death, in the reign of an-
other king who knew not Joseph, who knew not,
that is, the Archbishops of Canterbury, his very
foundations seemed thrown down. The glory,
however, that has been claimed for Augustine be-
longs to another — to one of the missionaries of
the Northern Church, St. Aidan of Lindisfarne,
in Northumbria, for it was he who bore the chief
part in England's conversion ; so that, in the
strong and forcible language of Bishop Lightfoot,
" Aidan, and not Augustine, was the Apostle of
England."
Later on we shall see how can be trul}^ claimed
for a saint of the Celtic Church the chief place of
honor and glory ; but meanwhile this we would
say that, were it otherwise, were it so that to
Augustine pertained the honor of being God's
instrument for the conversion of England, then
the results would not follow which are claim.ed
by our Roman brethren. If the whole people of
JO LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
Britain had indeed been baptized by Augustine,
it would not therefore follow that those whom he
baptized were subject to the Church which sent
him. If this argument had any weight, then it
would follow that all Churches, Rome amongst
them, would be subject to the Church of Jerusa-
lem, for all the Apostles came forth of her.
'■'■ Out of Zion went forth the law, and the word of
the Lord from ferusalemr She was the Mother
Church of Christendom. But who is Paul and
who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye be-
lieved. Our Church to-day has her missionaries
in Japan, but they are building up there not a
Church of America, but a Church of Japan !
Yet, as we have seen, Augustine's work was
confined to Kent, and he was but one of several
missionaries at work there, many of whom were
natives of the country and sons of the native
Church. For all that he did we give him due
praise, but let us remember that, through no
fault of his, the mission after his death was ready
to vanish away, so overwhelmed was it with
trouble and disaster, and that the new life which
was breathed into it after Gregory's and Augus-
tine's deaths came from missionaries born in the
land and yielding obedience to that old Celtic
THE FIRST ITALIAN MISSION TO ENGLAND 71
Church which gave us such missionary heroes \ /
as Columba and Patrick and Aidan, than whose
names none shine brighter in all the missionary
records of the past.
V.
OUR CHURCH UNDER THE SAXONS
V.
OUR CHURCH UNDER THE SAXONS
*' Neither is he that planteth anything, neither is he that water-
eth ; but God that giveth the increase." — i Cor. iii. 7.
Would that men had always remembered
these words, and been willing to efface them-
selves and give God the glory.
On the death of Ethelbert, King of Kent, and
of Sabert, King of the East Saxons, the prospects
of the Italian mission in England seemed gloomy
indeed. Its very existence was threatened.
With the rise of persecution the Bishops of
London and Rochester fled into Gaul, and even
Laurentius, the successor of Augustine, was on
the point of following them when he was de-
terred by a dream, in which he saw himself re-
proved for his cowardice. A false step and all
would have been lost. Happily Laurentius re-
mained at his post, and his steadfastness saved
the work of Augustine from utter extinction.
Nothing that he could have done would have
76 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
more helped the cause of Christ in Kent than
this simple obedience to the teaching of his con-
science in the presence of danger. Eadbald, the
new King of Kent, was so much impressed by the
sight of this one Bishop remaining true to his
charge that he shortly afterward embraced the
Christian religion, and became to Laurentius all
that his father had been to Augustine.
That readiness to suffer, even unto death, in the
path of duty was fruitful of results greater even
than Eadbald's conversion. To that one deed of
Christian heroism was due the introduction of
Christianity into Northumbria.
The story of the preaching of the Gospel in the
north is so remarkably like the story of the
preaching in the south, that the parallel strikes
the least observant. In each case there is a
Christian queen who influences her husband to
become a Christian, under whom the nation turns
with much enthusiasm to Christ, only to relapse
again into paganism on the death of the Christian
king. Then, cast down, but not destroyed, the
Church, phoenix-like, rises from the fire to new-
ness of life. The account of the introduction of
Christianity into Northumbria reveals how Lau-
rentius, living at Canterbury, obtained a share in
OUR CHURCH UNDER THE SAXONS TJ
that glorious work, and how indeed but for him
no Italian missionary would have preached the
Gospel there. We have already seen that the
faithfulness of Laurentius resulted in Eadbald's
conversion. But observe the result of his becom-
ing a Christian. The day came when Edwin, the
King of Northumbria, desired to marry Ethel-
burga, Eadbald's sister. But Eadbald would not
allow his sister to marry a pagan unless she
should have full power to worship Christ accord-
ing to her conscience ; when this had been agreed
to the Kentish princess went northward, accom-
panied by Paulinus, one of the four missionaries
whom Gregory had sent to Augustine. So Ethel-
burga became Edwin's queen, with Paulinus as
her chaplain.
Paulinus, not content with being merely a
queen's chaplain, preached in all the surrounding
country ; but long he toiled, long without success.
There was apparently no result. Like Henry
Martyn in India, or St. Anskar in Denmark, he
labored on without gaining a single convert.
Doubtless the king respected the tall, stately,
dignified old man who had left his home to
preach the Gospel in a foreign land ; but he re-
mained apparently uninfluenced, and even unin-
78 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
terested. Yet God's word does not return unto
Him void. Respect for the preacher passed at
last into respect for the religion he preached, and
Edwin was at last persuaded in his own mind
that the religion Paulinus preached was true.
He called a meeting of his wise men at Good-
manham, near York, famous for its idolatrous
temple, that they might publicly consider the
merits of Christianity.
Most interesting is the account we have in
Bede of that memorable gathering. The king
opened the. proceedings. For a year they had
had, he said, the new faith represented in their
midst by Paulinus. What did they think of it?
Were they prepared to accept it ?
Coifi, the pagan priest of the adjoining temple,
was the first to speak. And the moment he be-
gan it was evident that paganism was doomed in
Deira.
*' No man," he said, " had served the gods better
than he had done, but many Avere much better off.
Now if the gods were of any use at all they
would most certainly have favored him most, but
they had not done so. He for one was read}^ to
try the new religion."
It was the speech of a man whose idea of re-
\
OUR CHURCH UNDER THE SAXONS 79
ligion was not very exalted. It was of the earth,
earthy. Far different, indescribably suggestive
and pathetic, was the speech of a certain thane,
vv'ho expressed in a vivid simile that bewilder-
ment as to the mystery of life which weighed
heaviest on the most thoughtful of the heathen.
" I will tell you, O King, what methinks man's
life is like. Sometimes when your hall is lit up
for supper on a wild winter's evening, and warmed
by a fire in the midst, a sparrow flies in by one door,
takes shelter for a moment in the warmth, and
then flies out again b}^ another door, and is lost
in the stormy darkness. No one in the hall sees
the bird before it enters, nor after it has gone
forth ; it is only seen while it hovers near the fire.
Even so, I ween, as to this brief span of our life in
this v/orld ; what has gone before it, what will
come after it — of this we know nothing. If the
strange preacher can tell us, by all means let him
be heard."
Then Paulinus was invited to address the as-
sembly. Ver}^ picturesque must the scene have
been. The Italian stood there in his black flow-
ing robes :
" Mark him of shoulders curved and stature tall,
Black hair and vivid eye, and meag^re cheek."
So LECTURES OX CHURCH HISTORY
Such was Paulinus, a t3'pical Italian ecclesias-
tic. The King, his thanes and freemen, sat around
the hall in their snow}' tunics and cloaks, fastened
with cairnsrorms. What Paulinus said we know
not. Perhaps like Augustine before Ethelbert,
'* he told how the tender-hearted Jesus bj His
throes redeemed this sinful world, and had opened
the kingdom of heaven to all believers." But the
effect his address produced we do know. When
he had finished, Coifi spoke again. " Now I un-
derstand what the truth is. I have long known
that it was not with us : but now I see it shining
out clearly in this teaching. Let us destrov these
useless temples and altars, and give them up to
the curse and the flame I " Thus by its own
priest paganism stood condemned. " Who will
begin," said Edwin, *' the work of destroving the
altars and temples of idolatry." Coifi claimed
that it was most fitting that he should deal the
first blow, and apply the torch to that which in
his folly he had reverenced. No time was lost.
The temple of Goodmanham was soon from end
to end a sheet of fire, and the red glare of the
burning building proclaimed to the men of De-
ira that their king and his wise men had declared
the gods of their fathers to be no gods, but only
OUR CHURCH UNDER THE SAXOXS Si
the work of men's hands and the imagination of
their hearts.
Thus did* Xorthumbria by a national act accept
Christianity. Edwin speedily caused a chapel to
be reared at York, on the spot where now the
glorious minster stands, and in that rude chapel
on Easter eve, April ii, Gij, he was baptized, and
many of his nobles and people with him. That
was the birthday of the Northumbrian Church.
But as it was in Kent, so it was in Northum-
bria. The day came when the joy of the Chris-
tians was turned into sorrow. The sword of
paganism went through the land, and Edwin was
cut off in the midst of his days. A champion of
paganism had appeared, Penda, King of the Mer-
cians. For thirty years this heathen king was a
terror to the Christians. There is a sort of fasci-
nation about the career of one who seemed irre-
sistible as destiny. Of five kings he slaughtered,
Edwin was the first. Edwin's death was to the
Christians in Northumbria what the slaying of
Josiah at Megiddo was to the Jews of old. Good
men recovered his body and buried it, but who
could take Edwin's place ? It was as when the
ark of God was taken. The Bishop of York, in
the royal palace which would never again hear
S2 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
the master's voice, felt that the end had come.
He could stay no longer. Taking with him Ed-
win's widowed queen, he fled with her and her
child back to her old Kentish home. But he
never returned to York. The See of Rochester
being vacant at the time he became its Bishop.
When the ashes of the Northumbrian Church
were fanned into a flame the breeze that blew
upon them came not from the south but from the
north ; not from Kent but from lona ; not from
Italy but from Scotland ; not from the Roman
Church but from the Celtic. From the monas-
tery St. Columba had founded among the West-
ern Isles came forth the missionaries who were
to be God's instruments in the double work of res-
toration and extension ; a work which should be
crowned with lasting and abundant success, and
which should give to one of them the title of
Apostle of England. But Penda's victory over
Edwin had not given him the sovereignty of
Northumbria. Edwin was succeeded by Oswald.
Very beautiful was Oswald's character. He was
all Edwin had been and more. In the prime and
glow of a pure and noble Christian manhood ; a
man who was wont, in the words of Bede, whilst
finding a temporal Kingdom to labor and pray
OUR CHURCH UNDER THK SAXONS 83
rather for an eternal one. He was altogether a
prince of men, one born to attract general en-
thusiasm, admiration, reverence, and love.
His first care on coming to the throne was to
set about the restoration of Christianity. Churches
were to be built, clergy appointed, services car-
ried on, Sacraments administered, and, above all,
the Bishopric filled. Where should he look for
aid ? Paulinus had fled, and was now Bishop of
Rochester. He looked for help nearer home. He
and his brother Oswy had spent years of exile in
lona, and had there learned to love the Celtic
Church and its holy teachers. Was it not an evi-
dent fulfilment of the famous prophecy of Co-
lumba, that to lona would come great honor, not
only from Scottish kings and people, but from
the kings of other nations also, when to lona the
Northumbrian king sent his request for a Bishop,
who should build up the church of God in his land.
The request was joyfully received, and a Bishop
named Corman was sent into Northumbria. But
Corman, though a good man, was ill-suited for
that work, and he soon returned to the Scottish
monastery. On telling how he could do noth-
ing with the barbarians of Northumbria, a gentle
voice asked, " Did you not, good brother, forget
84 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
the apostolic maxim about milk for babes ?" The
speaker was Aidan, one of the most lovable of
men, upon whom the choice of the brethren at
once fell. Going forth as a missionary Bishop,
Aidan settled not at York, but at the Isle of Lin-
disfarne, off the coast, and there made a second
lona. From that Holy Island, watered by the
North Sea, a race of missionaries came that real-
ly made England Christian. Of these Aidan was
the first and greatest. But mark this well — Aidan,
who came forth from the Celtic mission station at
lona, a missionary Bishop of the Celtic Church,
consecrated by Bishops of that Church at the re-
quest of the Northumbrian king, whose lot it was
never to meet Roman missionaries nor to have
dealings with Rome, is yet acknowledged by
Rome as a canonized saint.
The mission there begun again was carried on
with faith and zeal. Soon an event happened
which gave a great impetus to the missionary
work. Peada, a son of Penda, came from Mercia
to ask for the sister of Oswald to wife. In the
train of the princess went four priests of lona
into the heart of Penda's territory, to preach the
Gospel there. One of these priests, Diuma, be-
came Bishop of the Mercians, and another, Cedd,
OUR CHURCH UNDER THE SAXONS 8$
went farther southward— far into the land of
the East Saxons, where nearly forty years before
Mellitus had abandoned his Bishopric. There
Cedd did a brave and good work, and laid foun-
dations well and strong, like a wise master-builder.
Thus everywhere the Celtic missionaries were
strengthening the things which remained, which
were ready to die, and recovering the waste places.
With them the word of God was not bound.
They preached without let or hindrance. It was
not so with the Italians, as if an invisible hand
held them back, they could do nothing beyond
Kent ; to that little corner they seemed confined.
Their missionaries had indeed gone forth thence
in a spirit worthy of all honor to win new con-
quests, but a strange fatality pursued them.
Their work often came to naught. Yet where
they failed the Celtic teachers succeeded.
At length the time came when the long series
of victories over the outer works of paganism
were to be followed by the fall of the citadel it-
self. For many years Penda had reigned the prop
and support of heathenism. At last the fate he
had meted out to others came to himself. Seized
with the ambition to extend his borders, he came
into Northumbria determined to make it a part
86 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
of his own kingdom. Under Oswy, the king who
had succeeded Oswald, his elder brother, the
Northumbrians met the Mercians in the final battle
between paganism and Christianity. " Relying on
Christ their Leader," Oswy entered the battle.
Penda had an army like that of Ben-hadad, at-
tended by thirty chiefs of princely rank with their
auxiliaries, while Oswy had a mere handful. But
the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle
to the strong ; Penda was slain and his mighty
host was scattered.
That day must always remain a red - letter day
in Anglican Church history. The plains of
Yorkshire witnessed the fall of paganism ; since
then no secular powder in Britain has ever drawn
the sword for a heathen god.
The time was now fast approaching when the
seven Saxon nations would become one, but the
main factor in the accomplishment of that grand
result would be the Christian Church. Unity in
temporal matters would be suggested and
brought about by unit}^ in spiritual. This would
be the teaching force of the spectacle of '' the one
Lord, the one Faith, the one Baptism " in the
Church. But at present, as in civil and political
life, so in ecclesiastical. There was no unity of
OUR CHURCH UNDER THE SAXOXS 8/
action. We have seen that missionaries in Kent
labored independently of missionaries in Nor-
thumbria. There were other missionaries, too, la-
boring independently of either in the other Sax-
on kingdoms. Birinus, a Bishop consecrated in
Gaul, labored amongst the Saxons of Wessex ; Fe-
lix, a Bishop of Burgundy, and Fursey, an Irish
monk, labored together in Anglia with great suc-
cess, where two Italian missions had previously
failed, and lastly, AVilfrid, a monk of Lindisfarne,
preached to the Saxons of Sussex.
These were all bringing about the glorious re-
sult of a truly national Church, whose life Vv^as
in itself. Scotch and Irish, Burgundians and Ital-
ians, all were workers in that vineyard of the
Lord : to whom shall we yield the palm ?
Man is but a poor judge of the value of spirit-
ual work, and ought not to dogmatize at any time.
But to us it now seems plain that Scotland of-
ten succeeded when Italy failed, and that not to
Rome but to lona is justly due our greatest debt
of gratitude. Yet after all what matters it? For
*' who is Paul, and who is ApoUos but ministers
by whom ye believed ; for neither is he that plant-
eth anything, neither is he that watereth, but
God that giveth the increase."
VI.
THE FIRST PRIMATE OF ALL
ENGLAND
VI.
THE FIRST PRIMATE OF ALL
ENGLAND
" And they buried him in the city of David, among the kings,
because he had done good in Israel, both toward God and
toward his house." — 2 Chron. xxiv. 16.
If one had climbed to the top of a lofty moun-
tain in England, in the middle of the seventh cen-
tury, and from thence surveyed the whole land
from Northumbria to Kent, he would have seen
missionaries at work in all the seven Saxon king-
doms ; whilst in the extreme west of the countr}-,
v/ here the Saxon had never penetrated, and where
the ancient British still lived untrammelled and
free, he would have seen the old Church of Brit-
ain, planted and watered in apostolic times, flour-
ishing like a green bay-tree in the house of the
Lord. Of the various bands of missionaries none
were building up a grander spiritual temple than
those of the Celtic Church. That Church, rather
than the Latin, seemed destined to be the domi-
92 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
nating Christian influence in Western Europe. It
early gained for Ireland the name of the Isle of
the Saints, whilst its missionary successes in other
regions were such that it seemed to be the leaven
leavening the whole lump.
" Church historians," writes Haddon, himself a
Church historian, " cannot be far wrong in saying
that a mere turn of the scales, humanly speaking,
prevented the establishment in the seventh cen-
tury of an aggregate of Churches in Northwestern
Europe, looking for their centre to the Irish and
British Churches, and as entirely independent of
the Papacy as are the English-speaking Churches
of the present day."
Until the seventh century the sight might com-
monly have been witnessed in England of the Cel-
tic missionaries succeeding where Italian mission-
aries had failed, and of Celtic Bishops filling the
Bishoprics which had been abandoned in fear and
despair by those who had first held them. Thus
Cedd filled the Bishopric of London, from whence
Mellitus had fled ; Aidan the Bishopric of York,
from which Paulinus had fled ; whilst in Mercia
Diuma and Chad ruled with gentle sway, where
never, since the earliest days, had been seen upon
the mountains the feet of them that preach the
THE FIRST PRIMATE OF ALL ENGLAND 93
Gospel of peace and bring glad tidings of good
things. As yet, however, there was no " Church
of England," properly so called. Indeed there
was no England, but only a number of petty king-
doms, perpetually at war with one another; each
kingdom having its own separate and indepen-
dent mission at work within its borders.
But such a view from the mountain-top would
have revealed that, diverse as were the sources of
the missions, yet they grouped themselves around
two great centres, and practically there were but
two systems at work — the Celtic and the Italian.
There were on the one hand the missions of lona,
sent by the Church of St. Patrick and St. Co-
lumba, and on the other the missions of Rome,
sent out by St. Gregory and his successors.
Around one or other of these centres all mission-
ary efforts were grouped. Soon a contest for
supremacy arose between them. Rome unfurled
her standard to the breeze, and in reply to the
challenge the Celtic Church unfurled hers, and
summoned her warriors to the battle.
But let us here guard against a possible mis-
take. It would be to forestall history to suppose
that Rome, at this early date, had put forth those
claims of universal dominion which she, unhap-
94 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
pily and to the lasting injury of Christendom, put
forth in after years, and maintained ever since
with that dogged persistency which at once
raises the suspicion that she feels she must make
up for the weakness of her case by the very
strength and dogmatism of her assertions.
However, all the dogmatism in the world can-
not alter one jot or tittle of the facts of history.
There was a Church in Britain, in Scotland, and
in Ireland, which had all along maintained its own
separate and independent existence, and which
had begotten sons of such glorious character and
such distinguished careers that even the Latin
Church, with a catholicity and a large-hearted-
ness which it has rarely, if ever, shown since,
folded them in loving embrace and called them
Saints in the Holy Church of God. Thus she
loved Patrick and Aidan, until in a later age she
forgot that they were not hers, but the children
of her old rival — the sister Church in the isles of
Britain.
We have said that a contest for supremacy
arose between the two Churches : this was fought
out at Whitby, in Yorkshire, where the Romans
were victorious.
The proper time for keeping the Easter festival
THE FIRST PRIMATE OF ALL ENGLAND 95
was the chief subject for discussion at that coun-
cil, as it was also the immediate cause of its being
held.
The Churches in Britain had, as we have seen,
a method of keeping Easter unlike that generally
observed in Western Christendom. Augustine
had, without success, tried to persuade the British
Bishops to change this custom. At Whitby this
question was again opened, and, to the dismay of
the Celtic missionaries, their time-honored custom
was condemned, and that of their rivals held in
honor.
Os wy. King of Northumbria, had married a
daughter of Edwin and Ethelburga, one of the
children whom Paulinus had trained. Oswy
favored the Celtic customs, for he had been
trained at lona; but his queen favored the Italian
custom, far she had been taught by Kentish mis-
sionaries. Moreover, the tutor of her family was
Wilfrid, a monk of Lindisfarne, and one who both
b}^ birth and early training was a Celtic church-
man, but who had become a great admirer of
Rome, and a strong advocate of her claims. But
two could not walk together except they were
agreed. Oswy and part of the court were soon
keeping high festival in honor of Christ's resur-
g6 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
rection, whilst the queen and the other half of the
court were observing the most solemn time of the
Lenten Fast. And the Council of Whitby, in 664,
to establish uniformity of usage and custom, was
the not unnatural result.
King Oswy opened the proceedings by urging
the benefits of uniformity of custom among those
who were united in one faith, and then briefly
stated the subject for discussion :
They were to determine what w^as the right
day on which to observe Easter. Colman, Bishop
of Lindisfarne, argued for the Celtic custom, and
claimed for it the authority of St. Columba, and
above all, of St. John. Wilfrid was spokesman
for the other side. He admitted the truth of Col-
man's statement, but claimed that St. Peter, whose
teaching he followed, was of higher authority
than St. John, for that he kept the keys of the
kingdom of heaven. Turning to the Bishop of
Lindisfarne, the king asked if the words used by
Wilfrid had ever been spoken by the Lord to St.
Peter. The Bishop replied that they had been
certainly spoken. Then said the king w^ith a
quiet smile, but yet not wanting in seriousness :
'' And I say unto you both, that this is that door-
keeper whom I do not choose to gainsay, but as
THE FIRST PRIMATE OF ALL ENGLAND 9/
far as I know and am able, I desire in all things to
obey his rulings, lest haply when I come to the
doors of the kingdom I may find none to unbar
them, if he is adverse to me who is proved to
hold the keys."
The decision was a severe blow to the Celtic
members. In their judgment it was not only
disrespectful to the memory of Columba, but it
compromised the independence of their national
Church. Colman at once resigned his Bishopric
and returned to his old home. Doubtless he
thought of it as a victory for Rome, but it was
rather a victory of the universal Church against
lona. Of course Rome profited by it. From
that time forward Kent, the centre of Italian mis-
sionary work, became, in place of Northumbria,
the centre of the missionary work in all England.
And now we enter upon one of the most event-
ful periods of Anglican Church history. Within
the life of one generation men Avere to become
familiar with the idea of building up a great
national Church out of all the scattered elements
of Christianity, and they were to see that idea
visibly embodied before them. There was soon
to appear one of the grandest men in all the long
and eventful history of the English Church —
98 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury. Under
him the scattered missionaries were to leave off
building their small and independent chapels, and
uniting together as one strong and compact
body, they were to enter upon the building of a
mighty cathedral which should be great enough
and grand enough to tax all their energies and
enshrine their noblest aspirations. Very rapidly
was the change effected.
One has seen in a play the curtain fall, and on
its rising again a wholly different scene pre-
sented. So it was at Whitby. There the cur-
tain fell. In the interim before it rose again
the yellow pest raged from one end of the
country to the other. It struck down high and
low. It swept away Tuda, who followed Colman
as Bishop of Lindisfarne ; it swept away the
Bishops of London and Rochester, and spared
not the King of the Kentish men, nor the Arch-
bishop ot Canterbury himself.
When the curtain was lifted again, Wilfrid had
become Bishop of York, and Theodore, Arch-
bishop of Canterbury.
The appointment of Wilfrid to York was the
most natural thing in the world, but who could
have predicted the future life of Theodore when
THE FIRST PRIMATE OF ALL ENGLAND 99
a Greek monk at Tarsus ? The providence of
God in the choice of Theodore was plainly mani-
fest. His appointment was indeed providential.
As soon as the plague ceased, and the Church
could take measures for the spread of the Gospel,
it was decided, with the joint approval of the
Kings of Northumbria and Kent, to choose an
Archbishop from among the native clergy, and to
send him to Rome for consecration. In this way
the}^ thought to secure greater uniformity of wor-
ship and to reconcile the more or less discordant
and jarring elements. Whereupon the two kings
chose Wighard, one of the Kentish clergy, and
sent him to Rome for consecration. But in
Rome Wighard and nearly all of his companions
were carried off by a deadly pestilence. The
Bishop of Rome, Vitalian, was thereupon re-
quested by the two kings, himself to select a suit-
able man, and having consecrated him, to send
him to England. This Vitalian agreed to do,
but he had undertaken no easy task. Britain
was far away, and the vacant Bishopric went
abegging.
At last, however, a man was found, who was
destined to be to England, as his name implies, a
very gift of God ; and who, like St. Paul, was a
100 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
citizen of Tarsus, a city of Cilicia, and was like
him, too, well trained in secular and sacred learn-
ing, and a man also of proved character. Conse-
crated on March 26, 66S, by the Bishop of Rome,
the first Archbishop of the English Church to be
thus consecrated, and the last for three hundred
and fifty years afterward ; he was at the time
sixty-six years of age. Think of a man at such
an age — an age when men now speak of them-
selves as old, and of their work as done — hesi-
tating not to leave his home for a foreign land
there to labor among a people whose ways were
strange to him, and whose language he did not
understand. Yet for over twenty years he ruled
the Anglican Church, being over eighty-eight
years when he died. And he so ruled it that of
all the ninety-two Archbishops who have sat on
the throne of Augustine, none have been more
worthy than he. Of the good high-priest, Je-
hoiada, it is written : *' They buried him in the
city of David, among the kings, because he had
done good in Israel, both toward God and toward
his house." So the same honor might most fit-
tingly have been given to the " grand old man,"
as Dean Hook calls him, who on the second Sun-
day after Pentecost — May 27, 669— entered upon
THE FIRST PRIMATE OF ALL ENGLAND 101
his work as Archbishop of Canterbury, seventy-
two years after the arrival of Augustine.
Soon after his arrival Theodore made a general
visitation of the whole country. None disputed
his authority. He was at once and universally
accepted as the Primate of all England.
Summoning, in 673, at the earliest opportunity,
a council of his Suffragan Bishops and their clergy,
the Churches were constitutionally organized into
one province with the Archbishop as its spiritual
head. From that Council— known in history as the
Council of Hertford — the English Church dates
its existence as the National Church of the whole
land.
Having thus consolidated the Church, Theodore
next proceeded to take measures for its more ef-
fective working. His first act was to divide the
larger and more unwieldy dioceses into two or
more. Out of this action there arose the first ap-
peal to Rome ever made by an English Church-
man. Wilfrid's See of York was one of the largest
of these dioceses, and the Archbishop divided it
into four parts. Wilfrid, deeply offended at this,
lodged a personal appeal at Rome. Never before
had such a thing been done, and little encourage-
ment was given to any Bishop ever to do it again.
102 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
When Wilfrid returned, bringing judgment in
his favor, he was looked upon as a traitor. His
letters were burned and he himself w^as thrown
into prison, from which he was only released
on covenanting to depart from Northumbria.
The whole incident is most instructive, for all
that was done was the act, not of a despotic
king, but of a national Council whose presiding
officer was the only Archbishop consecrated by
the Pope whom England had received, or was to
receive for centuries.
Theodore evidently considered that he. Arch-
bishop of Canterbury, had no ecclesiastical su-
perior on earth, and believing this, he contended
manfully against all foreign interference with the
national Church of v/hich he was Primate. For
this we honor his name and memory ; but not for
this only. It was under him, too, that the rival
missions of Celts and Romans among the Anglo-
Saxons were blended together. Their Orders
were blended too.
Henceforth there was a double line of Apos-
tolic ministry in the Anglo -wSaxon Church, and
when by degrees the British Church, leaving her
mountain fastnesses, came forth and joined in the
noble work, the treble stream quickly became a
THE FIRST PRIMATE OF ALL ENGLAND IO3
mighty river flowing on to make glad the city
of God, thus making the Anglican Episcopate,
whether in England or America, the strongest
Apostolic succession in the world. Well, indeed,
then do w^e compare Theodore to Jehoiada as
having '' done good in Israel, both toward God
and toward his house."
And now, in bringing to a close this lecture on
the Anglo-Saxon period of English Church his-
tory, I cannot do so more fitly than by a sum-
mary in the words of Canon Bright, of the life of
that devoted saint, the Venerable Bede, whose
history (for he was born in 673), falls within this
period.
*' He is," says Canon Bright, in his '' Early Eng-
lish Church History," *' one of the most original
personages in history. And he is more — he is
one of the most admirable and lovable.
" Bede is the man of warm heart, whose affec-
tions go out to brethren and pupils, who is
spoken of as a ' dear father ' and a ' most be-
loved master,' and the man of thoroughly pious
soul, who ' shudders ' when ignorantly charged
with heresy ; calls sin by its right name in monks
or prelates, and lives in the thought of Divine
judgment and Divine mercy ; who describes
104 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
himself through life as rejoicing to serve the
Supreme Loving-kindness, and, student as he is,
comes regularl}^ to the daily offices, and is sup-
posed to have said in his sweet way that the
angels must not find him absent ; who closes his
history with a thanksgiving to the ' good Jesus *
for the ' sweet draught ' of Divine knowledge,
and a prayer to be brought safe to the Divine
Fountain of all wisdom ; who in his last hours
combines a loving trust in God and a desire
to be with Christ with a sense of the awfulness of
the ' need-fare ' and the doom ; who spends his
last minutes of working power in dictating an
English version of St. John's Gospel, calls his
work * finished ' when the last sentence has been
written, and passes away with his head resting on
a pupil's hands, with his eyes fixed on his wonted
place of devotion, with the ' Gloria ' to the Trinity
as the last utterance of his lips. ' A truly blessed
man.' We may well say with the eye-witness to
whom we owe this record : a man * venerable ' and
dear to all generations of English Christianity ; a
* candle,' in the words of the great St. Boniface,
* which the Lord lighted up ' in Northumbria,
and which has burned with a calm lustre through
the centuries that have canonized his name."
VII.
OUR CHURCH UNDER THE NORMANS
VII.
OUR CHURCH UNDER THE NORMANS
" I will make them one nation in the land." — Ezekiel xxx. 22.
Archbishop Theodore died in the year 690,
and was laid to rest in the Monastery of Saints
Peter and Paul, once the palace of Ethelbert,
King of Kent, and which had become the resi-
dence of the Archbishops of Canterbury, and is
now St. Augustine's College, whose alumni are to
be found in every part of the world.
But just a century later, in 787, the first of those
roving bands of pirates which were for many
years to trouble the peace of England and of Eng-
land's Church, appeared off the coast of Nor-
thumbria. They landed at Whitby, when a
panic-stricken people learned only too late the
character of their visitors. They were the rob-
bers of the North Sea. Not inappropriately did
they fly from the masthead of their ships their
black raven standard — black death followed in
their train. Their first act at Whitby was to
I08 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
massacre the people, who, suspecting no evil, had
poured down to the waterside to meet them ;
whilst their next was to sack and destroy the
monastery which had been the glory of the town,
but which was now the innocent cause of its
ruin.
The Monastery of Whitby was, indeed, famous
throughout England, not only as the place where
the great Paschal controversy had been settled,
but for the value of its sacred treasures. But
alas for Whitby ! The King of Babylon in times
long gone by did not more completely despoil
the ancient Jewish Temple of its treasures, nor
leave it in greater ruins, than the Northmen de-
spoiled and destroyed
" High Whitby's cloistered pile ; "
they found it a calm and peaceful dwelling-place
of men of God, they left it a smoking ruin.
But this was onl}^ a beginning — an instalment
of what was to come afterward. Dark days were
in store for the Church throughout the land.
The ravagers of Whitby were but the forerun-
ners of others who would come in swarms to de-
solate the land with fire and sword, driven on, not
only by a thirst for plunder, but also by a mad
OUR CHURCH UNDER THE NORMANS IO9
hatred against the Saxon Christians, who had for-
saken the worship of Woden.
Soon others came and plundered even the sa-
cred shrine on Holy Island. It was that deed,
more than any other, which cast a spell of terror
far and wide, for there was no spot in all England
so sacred or so dear as the Abbey of Lindisfarne.
" A solemn, huge and dark-red pile
Placed on the margin of the Isle.
*' In Saxon strength that abbey frown'd,
With massive arches broad and round
That rose alternate, row and row,
On ponderous columns short and low,
Euilt ere the art was known
By pointed aisle and shafted stalk,
The arcades of an abbey'd walk
To emulate in stone."
As the monks fled from the Holy Isle they
saw behind them the glare of their burning home.
Sadly they recalled and applied to themselves
the words of the Psalmist, words which they had
often recited in their daily offices :
" O God, wherefore art thou absent from us so
long? Why is thy wrath so hot against the sheep
of thy pasture? Thine adversaries roar in the
no LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
midst of thy congregations and set up their ban-
ners for tokens. They break down all the carved
work thereof with axes and hammers. They have
set fire upon thy holy places and have despoiled
the dwelling-places of thy name, even to the
ground. Yea, they said in their hearts, Let us
make havoc of them altogether : thus have they
burnt up all the houses of God in the land."
Within seven years every monastic institution
in Northumbria was swept away. From Lindis-
farne to Canterbury there was an unbroken scene
of desolation. And for miles inland the land,
once like the garden of the Lord, became a waste,
and the few Christians that were left sat down
and wept when they remembered their goodly
land and the place where they had loved to wor-
ship God : '' Our holy and beautiful house, where
our fathers praised thee, is burned up with fire :
and all our pleasant things are laid waste." So
Isaiah had said in his sixty-fourth chapter, and it
had come to pass in their time that the prophecy
was fulfilled.
To the men of that day, says John Richard
Green, it must have seemed as though the world
had gone back three hundred years. The same
northern fiords poured forth their pirate fleets
OUR CHURCH UNDER THE NORMANS III
as in the days of Hengist or Cerdic. There was
the same wild panic as the black boats of the in-
vaders struck inland along the river-reaches or
moored round the river isles ; the same sights of
horror, firing of homesteads, slaughter of men,
women driven off to slavery, children tossed on
pikes or sold in the market-place, as when the
English themselves had attacked Britain. Chris-
tian priests were again slain at the altar by wor-
shippers of Woden ; letters, arts, religion, gov-
ernment, disappeared before these Northmen as
before the Northmen of three centuries before.
Churches were again the special object of attack ;
invaders again settled on a conquered soil ; hea-
thendom again proved stronger than the faith in
Christ."
But "the night is long that never finds the
day." As soon as the heathen had made for
themselves a home in the land, the two races
settled down peaceably side by side and became
one people. The Danes readily embraced the re-
ligion of the Saxons. The conquerors sank into
the mass of the conquered, and Woden yielded
without a struggle to Christ, and the prophecy
was again fulfilled, '' I will make them one nation
in the land."
112 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
Yet it is remarkable how little permanent trace
the Danes left of their invasion and settlement of
England in the history of the Church. That his-
tory would have been written, almost identically
as it has been, even if the Danes had never come.
The waves of persecution indeed rolled over the
Church, threatening- at times to overwhelm her,
but they left almost no permanent effects. As she
came forth tried in the fire of Saxon persecution,
so she came forth triumphant from that of the
Danes. But there zuas this striking difference in the
after-history of Saxons and Danes. The Saxons
were converted from without ; the Danes were
converted from within. Italians and Celts taught
the way of truth to the Saxons, whilst the ancient
British stood idly by ; but the Saxons became mis-
sionaries to their conquerors, a blessed illustration
of the principle of forgiveness and a noble in-
stance of obedience to the command to do good
even unto enemies. True, the Saxons and Danes
were both of the same Teutonic race. They both
came from the north country : they were breth-
ren. But, brothers in blood, they found a closer
tie in the one great family of God. That was
indeed a beautiful sight when, not long after the
battle of Ethandune, in which Alfred vanquished
OUR CHURCH UNDER THE NORMANS II3
the Danes, Alfred stood sponsor to the Danish
king at his baptism, and gave him his Christian
name of Athelstan.
It was during the life of King Alfred — " a saint
without superstition; a scholar without ostenta-
tion; a warrior all of whose wars were fought in
defence of his country ; a conqueror whose hands
were never stained by cruelty ; a prince never cast
down by adversity, never lifted up by insolence in
the hour of triumph " — that the Church of Eng-
land, under his guidance, gave proof of that en-
ergy which had preserved her national and inde-
pendent character, by opening a communication
with the Christians of the far east in Jerusalem
and with Churches in India. What first induced
Alfred to send such a mission we know not, but
the '' Chronicles " say that he sent ships to India
with alms for the poor Churches there which had
been founded in apostolic times.
" Behold a pupil of the monkish gown,
The pious Alfred, King to Justice dear ;
Lord of the harp and liberating spear,
Mirror of princes !
Though small his kingdom as a spark or gem,
Of Alfred boasts remote Jerusalem ;
And Christian India, through her wide-spread clime,
In sacred converse gifts with Alfred shares."
8
114 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
We enter now upon the Norman period, which
begins in 1066, when England found her con-
queror in the person of William of Normandy.
At the battle of Hastings, which gave the crown
to William, the curtain falls ; when it rises again
the English Church has entered upon a new
phase of her existence, and we are face to face
with what has been termed the Mediseval Church,
a Church which has fallen under the domination
of the Bishop of Rome.
The Normans were in reality Northmen who
had been settled in France some two hundred
years before the conquest of England.
But they had long ceased to have anything in
common with their forefathers. They were now
Frenchmen, speaking a French tongue and no
other. A similar process was to go on in Eng-
land. They were there to become more English
than the English themselves, and there was to be
but one nation in the land. But as they came in
on the flood-tide, bearing down all opposition,
it really seemed as if the independence of the
Church had gone forever, for the Papacy had no
more devoted followers than they.
It required no prophet to predict the loss of
her independence by the English Church. Will-
OUR CHURCH UNDER THE NORMANS II5
iam had received the blessing of Pope Alexan-
der on his attempt to subjugate the English peo-
ple, sailing for England with a banner blessed for
the undertaking by him. William professed that
he desired to bring the country under the domin-
ion of the Roman See — hence the consecrated
banner — and this was the surest way to gain the
Pope's approval ; for as Mr. Freeman, the histo-
rian of the Norman Conquest, says : *' England's
crime, in the eyes of Rome — the crime to pun-
ish which William's crusade v/as approved and
blessed — was the independence still retained by
the English Church and nation. A land where
the Church and nation were but different names
for the same community, a land whei"e priests and
prelates were subject to the law like other men,
a land where the king and his witan gave and
took away the staff of the Bishops, was a land
which, in the eyes of Rome, was more dangerous
than a land of Jews and Saracens."
But we must not exaggerate the influence even
of Rome at this time, although it is easy to do so.
There was nothing like that complete surrender
of all liberty of thought and action which we ob-
serve is the result of Roman teaching and Roman
claims in this nineteenth century. The assertion
Il6 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
of authority went far, but not so far. How far it
went we may see in the correspondence which
William himself had with the Bishop of Rome,
who was no other than the famous Hildebrand,
Gregory VII.
Hildebrand had asked William for his homage.
William's reply must have been a startling re-
minder that William had ceased to be a mere
Norman duke, for there rings out in his words
that old spirit which had shown itself first in the
reply of the British Bishops to Augustine, and
later on in the refusal of an English Parliament to
allow Wilfrid, Bishop of York, to go unpunished
for having appealed to Rome. " Homage to thee I
have not chosen, nor do I choose to do. I never
made a promise to that effect, neither do I find
that it was ever performed by my predecessors
to thine."
This was indeed a strong rebuke to Hildebrand,
who had conceived the idea of making the papa-
cy a universal monarchy. The Bishop of Rome
was to be supreme ruler, kings and princes were
merely to govern in temporal matters as his depu-
ties. He claimed to possess not only the keys of
the kingdom of heaven, but of every earthly king-
dom as well.
OUR CHURCH UNDER THE NORMANS 11/
Already the Eastern Church had protested
against the extravagant claims of the Roman
pontiff, and had refused to bow to his usurped
authority ; and the Great Schism had separated
the Church in the East from the Church in the
West, and the sorry spectacle had been seen of a
Roman Bishop claiming the title of Universal
Bishop — which Gregory the Great had said none
but Anti-christ could assume — excommunicating
the Eastern Church and the Patriarch of Con-
stantinople ; and the Patriarch of Constantinople,
on his part, returning railing for railing, and ex-
communicating the Roman Bishop and the West-
ern Church.
With such a spirit as this abroad, and with such
claims put forth in a semi-barbarous age by the
Bishop of the greatest cit}^ of the West, when the
tide of corruption was rising very rapidly, we
may not wonder that the influx of Norman Bish-
ops and clergy which followed in the footsteps of
the Conqueror led to the binding of the English
Church by Roman bonds. But it was a struggle
of might against right. The English Church
submitted simply because she could not help sub-
mitting. Constitutionally, however, she never
submitted to the overlordship of the Roman
Il8 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
Bishop, and through all her long history no
voice of hers, uttered in synod or convocation,
ever acknowledged that she was a part of the
Roman Church, and a part she never was, never
has been, and we may well add, by the grace
of God, never will be.
But to William, notwithstanding his sturdy re-
fusal to allow any interference with the secular
affairs of his kingdom, we owe the acknowledged
interference of the Pope in the spiritual affairs
of the Church. William, in fact, regarded the
Bishop of Rome as the spiritual head of the
Church, and he acted accordingly.
Through him two Cardinals, in 1070, presided at
a synod in Winchester, when, for the first time in
the course of over one thousand years, the Bishop
of Rome was allowed by the alien Conqueror
to exercise jurisdiction in the English Church.
From that time onward the Bishop of Rome and
his successors claimed the right to put down one
and set up another in that Church.
But it was the Church of England still. The
strong man armed might have broken into her
house and robbed her of her gold and silver, her
plate and her jewelry, yea even of freedom itself,
but the property was rightfully hers, and she was
OUR CHURCH UNDER THE NORMANS II9
no bond-slave but a free woman. Bound for a
time she was, then, in her own house, and she had
the mortification of seeing thousands of gold and
silver, in the shape of Peter's pence and tithes and
first-fruits, going year by year to provide for the
necessities of the successor of the Fisherman who
dwelt in apostolic poverty at Rome; but she
never ceased to protest against her unjust treat-
ment, even Avhen she lay bound a helpless captive.
Then the day came when, gathering all her
strength, she threw off the yoke, and in those
calm words, which sum up in one sentence the
protests and the struggles of five centuries, she
asserted her rightful freedom from all foreign in-
terference : " The Bishop of Rome has no juris-
diction in this realm of England."
Yet even after the power Avas broken and the
chain cast away, it was long before the Church-
men of Reformation days could feel themselves
safe. Like a dread nightmare the memory of
Egyptian bondage hung about them, and until far
into the reign of Elizabeth they continued to pray
in the Litany, " From the tyranny of the Bishop
of Rome and all his detestable enormities, Good
Lord, deliver us."
Now it is in no spirit of uncharitableness that
I20 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
we say a single word against the Roman Church.
Indeed it is not against her that we speak at all.
We are not dealing with Rome, but with Eng-
land and America ; not with that Church but with
our own, which lays this burden upon us. Canon
21, Title I, gives charge to this effect: ''Minis-
ters of this Church, who have charge of parishes,
shall be diligent in informing the youth and
others in the Doctrine, Constitution, and Liturgy
of the Church." We desire to be obedient to this
teaching. But in so doing we must of necessity
speak of that other Church, for the history of our
own is bound up with it like the history of twin
sisters. We have indeed a great respect for that
Church. We reverence the names of many of its
Bishops and clergy. We acknowledge the great-
ness of the work it has done. But we are not
blind to its faults. Yet even of these we would
not speak were it not that some of them concern
ourselves ; of its unsisterly conduct toward the
national Church of England in times past — con-
duct in which to this very day, so far as it can, it
perseveres without sign of repentance or amend-
ment of life — we may not be silent if we would be
faithful to our ofhce and Church. In England
and in this land she is a Church in schism. She
OUR CHURCH UNDER THE NORMANS 121
is an erring sister who is under the strange hallu-
cination that she is the mother and mistress of all
Churches.
Here we take our stand. We are not rabid
Protestants seeing Rome at every turn as an ever-
present evil, and believing that the Roman Bishop
is unquestionably the man of sin who sits in the
temple of God, showing himself that he is God.
But there are so many who imagine that the
Anglo-American Church was once a part of the
Roman, that for Zion's sake we may not hold our
peace until that notion is consigned to the cate-
gory of such popular fallacies as that Columbus
ever discovered North America, or that if you
hang a snake upon the limb of a tree it is a sure
sign of rain.
Like old Cato, who never spoke in the Roman
senate without closing his speech with the words
— it mattered not what he had been speaking
about — " Delenda est Carthago " (Carthage must
be destroyed) ; so let our clergy say, with refer-
ence to this popular fallacy that the Anglo-Ameri-
can Church was ever a part of the Roman, this fal-
lacy must be destroyed. We grant that through
the advent of the Normans the Bishop of Rome
carried matters in that Church with a high hand,
122 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
but it remained still the old Church of the land,
and our own Church in America is not another but
the same. It is not that the Church of England
is our mother or our sister; she is identically the
same Church, just as the Roman Church amongst
us is the same as that from which Archbishop
Satolli has come to keep it here in order.
Submit to Rome for a time she may have done,
as the various national Churches of Spain, or
France, or Austria are doing to-day, yet she is
and was the Church of England all through her
history, and when Saxon, Dane, and Norman
dwelt at last together in peace and harmony, and
God had made them one nation in the land, then
the national Church rose again into newness of
life and vigor ; and (in the words of Bishop Cleve-
land Coxe),
" Again in noble English
The Christian anthems swell,
And out the organ pealeth
O'er stream and stilly dell.
" And the bells swing free and merry,
And a nation shouteth round,
For the Lord Himself hath triumphed
And his Voice is in the sound."
VIII.
THE BABYLONIAN BONDAGE
VIII.
THE BABYLONIAN BONDAGE
"Men that had understanding of the times to know what
Israel ought to do." — i Chron. xii. 32.
In our last lecture we barely crossed the thresh-
old of the Norman period ; but we saw suffi-
cient to indicate its general character so far as it
affected the Church of England. It was a period
when the gold had become dim and the fine gold
changed. A period which recalls God's words to
Abraham : " Know of a surety that thy seed shall
be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall
serve them, and they shall afflict them fourhun-
dred years, and also that nation whom they shall
serve will I judge." This prophecy might, in-
deed, have been originally spoken of the Angli-
can Church, so signally was it fulfilled in her his-
tory. Although not in a foreign land, but in her
own, she yet served in bondage for more than
four hundred years, until God struck off the
chain that bound her, and gave her the freedom
126 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
for which, like a bird in the snare of the fowler,
she had long pined and struggled.
Now in declaring in the last lecture that not
by choice but by necessity do we speak at all of
the Church of Rome, and only then so far as her
doings and her doctrines are bound up with our
own history, we would not have you forgetful of
one main purpose which is in our mind — to show
that there was from the beginning a national
Church in England, which, entirely independent
of Rome in her origin, has been rightfully inde-
pendent all through her history ; so that even
when the strong man armed prevailed against
her, she unceasingly raised her voice against the
interference from which she suffered. When
Galileo, brow-beaten by the court of Rome, was
bidden deny that the earth moves, as he had
taught it did, he was heard, so it is said, to
mutter: ''It does move; it does move." So in
like manner the national Church of England, en-
slaved by the Bishop of Rome, protested : " This
land is mine ; is mine, not yours." And to others
she said : " Mark you, I pray, how I have built
here a goodly temple for the Lord, and another
seeks to rob me of it ; but it is mine, it is mine."
But as we remember that the bondage of our
THE BABYLONIAN BONDAGE 12/
national Church was but the working out in one
place of a vast system by which other Churches
had also been deprived of their freedom, we may
ask, not unreasonably, " How came such a system
to meet with the success it did?" Surely we have
here not man's work only, the mere workings of
a boundless ambition. That, indeed, seems to
have been the chief force in that old Roman
world, when, by a masterful will, the republic
was swallowed up by the empire, and Augustus
Caesar became absolute lord from the Tigris to
the Straits of Gibraltar. Or as when, in later
days, the first Napoleon passed from country to
country, deposing king after king, until he had
filled the thrones of Europe with mere creatures
of his own. But surely there is something nobler,
better, grander, in the workings of the Roman
Church toward a supremacy unparalleled in gran-
deur of conception, as it is in the breadth of its
sway and the extent of its dominion. May we not
believe that behind a Gregory or a Leo we can
see God's hand, in which they were even but the
unconscious instruments and tools. We do not
doubt that God was bringing about His purpose.
It is often thus. Nebuchadnezzar fulfilled God's
will when he destroyed the Temple and carried
128 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
the Jews into captivity. And the Papacy served
a purpose in those days, which we call the " good
old times," but which none of us would have back
again even if we could ; for they were times when
might was right, and when there prevailed
" The good old rule, the simple plan,
That he shall take who has the power,
And he shall keep who can."
But those days are passed, and despite the dream-
ings of the prisoner of the Vatican, who longs to
see Hildebrand's vision realized, those days will
never return. The world will no more go back
to them than the soldiers of this generation can
be persuaded to fight with crossbows and arrows.
" The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils Himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.'*
But if we ask for those causes which we can see
and tabulate, in the working out of the present
Roman claims, we are at once struck with the
difference between early and late positions on the
subject. We are now told that the Bishop of
Rome is great as the successor of St. Peter. The
early Bishops of Rome, however, w^ould have
THE BABYLONIAN BONDAGE 1 29
told you that their greatness depended upon the
importance of their historic Bishopric.
Here is the first great cause of the Roman Bish-
op's importance. From almost the very first,
they were inclined on this ground to magnify
their office. Victor, Bishop of Rome in the second
century, took a very lofty tone in a contro-
versy with Polycrates, Bishop of Constantinople,
just because he was the Bishop of Rome. He
gave all men to understand that he was no Bish-
op of a little provincial town, but the spiritual
chief of Imperial Rome, the world's metropolis.
•' Ah, man dressed up in a little brief authority
Plays such pranks as makes high heaven weep ! "
After this plan had been worked for a while,
there came slowly creeping in the strange teach-
ing that St. Peter had been at one time Bishop of
Rome, and that he was Prince of the Apostles
and keeper of the keys of heaven, and we know
not what besides ; and this theory was made to
do its part toward helping the growing preten-
sions of the Bishop of Rome. But attractive as
it was, it could not do all that was required of it.
Darwin was not the first to realize the inconven-
ience of a missing link. Granted that St. Peter
9
130 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
had been to Rome ; granted even the extremely
improbable thing that he was ever Bishop there,
what had the line of Popes and Antipopes to do
with any personal gift or grace of St. Peter, any
more than had, say, the Pontifex Maximus or the
Pythia of Delphi ?
The fact is that the missing link was like to
have proved fatal ; but everything comes to the
man who can wait. One morning in the ninth
century the Pope awoke and found himself
famous. Certain letters had been found which
professed to have been written in apostolic
times, and in which all that the Popes desired
was granted to them. These letters, which are
the greatest fraud known to history, are the
foundation upon which the Papacy must rest.
They are the Forged Decretals. Every one now
acknowledges them to be forgeries, but they
served their purpose. A voice from the grave
could not be questioned. The Popes only too
gladly accepted them as valid and governed
themselves accordingly ; and what the greatness
of Rome could not do, nor yet the shadow of St.
Peter, was done in a single lifetime by an abom-
inable act of fraud.
When the Forged Decretals came to be ex-
THE BABYLONIAN BONDAGE 13I
amined they were easily proved to be an impu-
dent and clumsy forgery, as manifestly false as a
will written upon paper which at the date of the
will had not actually been invented.
There is indeed nothing to show that the Popes
of that day knew these documents were forger-
ies; they probably did not. Singularly enough,
indeed, no great scholar had been Bishop of
Rome. Doubtless those good but not scholarly
Bishops were imposed upon. Only the monk
who in the silence of his cell was guilty of the de-
ception, probably under the idea that he could
rightly do evil that good might come, knew in
that day what the character of those letters really
was. But oh, what shall we say of the Pope's in-
fallibility ? An infallible man the subject of de-
ception !
Do you ask, when those letters were proved to
be false why did not the Bishops of Rome, who
had climbed to power by means of them, begin
with shame to take the lowest room ? Is this
your question? It is a natural one. Bishop
Coxe, in his " Institutes of Christian History,"
answers it admirably. " Did you ever see stone-
masons turn an arch ? They make a framework
out of refuse wood, of laths and scantlings, any-
132 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
thing that comes to hand. A few nails suffice to
hold these together. They set it in place on
abutments well prepared, and then begin to work
in stone. They soon erect the arch, and set the
keystone, and build upon it a bridge or a castle
or a tower that reaches to heaven. Then no
longer any need of the framework ; a beggar may
kick it out and turn it into fuel to boil his soup ;
but the arch remains for ages. So the decretals
have disappeared, but that arch of pride, the Pa-
pacy, stands the firmer because of all that has
been built upon it. And then the arch itself is
old and interesting ; it is ivy-clad and green with
associations of poesy and romance."
We have treated this matter at some length in
order that you may understand that the Papacy
was something comparatively new, and hence had
not that prestige in those days which it has often
now. For this alone will explain why it was that
such a man as Theodore, Archbishop of Canter-
bury, after being appointed to his Archbishopric
by the Pope, should evidently assume that he
was under no canonical obedience to him. No
Roman Archbishop in these days could take that
independent position ; indeed, accustomed so long
to regard themselves as merely agents of the
THE BABYLONIAN BONDAGE 133
Roman See, it would hardly ever occur to them
to do so ; and yet in those times the Archbishops
of Canterbury were constantly seen resisting en-
croachments of the Popes. We shall see that
this was the case all through this period. Lan-
franc at the beginning, and Langton later on, al-
though one was an Italian, the other an English-
man, both resented any interference as uncalled
for and uncanonical ; and even Anselm, strong
and fervent admirer as he was of the See of
Rome — a second Wilfred in his devotion — even
Anselm sent off, without a hearing, a Legate
whom the Pope had ventured to send into Eng-
land. But they were men that had understand-
ing of the times, to know what Israel ought
to do.
Let us make these statements good. In this lee-
ture we shall not go beyond the reign of Henry
III., which ended about the middle of the Nor-
man period, i.e., the latter part of the thirteenth
century, for then the reaction set in which found
its goal in the Reformation of the sixteenth cen-
tury. Until Henry's reign matters in the Church
were getting worse and worse ; after his reign
they began to get better and better. Henry was
the eldest son of John of infamous memory, and,
134 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
to use the scriptural phrase, " He walked in the
ways of his father, and did evil in the sight of the
Lord."
The general character of this period was dark,
and yet there was a continual assertion of the
rights of the National Church. At one time
those rights were asserted by the king in opposi-
tion to the Archbishops and Bishops; at one time
by the Archbishops and Bishops in opposition to
the king, and then again by the two together ;
but in one way or another the captive Church
never failed to assert her rightful place. Let us
observe this.
The first Norman Archbishop of Canterbury
was Lanfranc, by birth an Italian, who had been
Abbot of Bee, and might have become an Arch-
bishop in Normandy. But it was reserved for him,
as another Theodore, at sixty-six years of age, to
assume the government of the Church in distant
England. Under him, Italian as he was, Anglican
liberties were openly asserted and were perfectly
safe. Lanfranc was succeeded by Anselm, one of
the saintliest of men and one of the most scholar-
ly, but a great admirer of Rome. Anselm wished
to go to Rome to receive investiture there as
Archbishop ; but to this William Rufus would not
THE BABYLONIAN BONDAGE 1 35
agree. When Anselm pleaded a Roman canon,
the king simply asked, what had he to do with a
Roman canon ? saying he would never renounce
a right which he had inherited. The Bishops, to
their honor be it said, supported the king and
maintained the customs of the Church of the land.
Not long after, the king declared, " So long as he
lived he would, God helping him, never permit
the rights and privileges of the kingdom of Eng-
land to be diminished ; " and added, " that even if
he should be inclined to yield, which God forbid,
his nobles would not tolerate it." He hoped
therefore the Pope would not drive him to the
extreme measure of renouncing all intercourse
with the See of Rome.
The whole trouble between William Rufus and
Anselm arose out of a question as to who should
appoint the Bishops. The kings had claimed
that privilege, and as a sign of their right they
invested the new Bishop with his ring and staff.
But Gregory VII. had objected to this, and ere
the question was settled sixty battles had been
fought and countless lives lost ; and not till fifty-
six years after the question arose was it practi-
cally settled against the Pope and in favor of
the king, the latter giving up the form but re-
136 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
taining the substance, by ceasing to deliver the
ring and staff, but continuing to nominate the
Bishop !
In the reign of Henry II., the first Plantage-
net, another question arose. At the Conquest the
clergy had obtained the right to be tried in their
own courts and by their own orders. The king
wished to bring the clergy again under the same
temporal discipline as the laity, a thing which
seems both reasonable and desirable. But noth-
ing would induce the then Archbishop, Thomas
a Becket, to agree to it. Finally, after a few
hasty words from the king, in his own cathedral
the Archbishop was slain. It has been styled a
martyrdom. It was undoubtedly an inexcusable
and cruel murder, and as a matter of policy a
gigantic mistake. Not until the Reformation was
that change entirely effected. The king was
humbled to the dust. He became the sinner,
whilst Becket became the saint. In Canterbury^
the scene of martyrdom, a splendid shrine arose.
It was the most popular shrine in Europe ; and so
great were the crowds that came to Avorship there
that the stone floor where they knelt is percepti-
bly worn away. But the king, although he had
been vanquished, was yet struggling for the right.
THE BABYLONIAN BONDAGE 1 37
He was, however, ahead of his age. The Church
and the world were not ripe for the change.
Of him we cannot say that he had understanding
of the times, though he knew what Israel ought
to do.
But we come now to a man who, of all men,
had understanding of the times, and to whom God
gave grace and power to be true to himself, his
people, his Church, and even to the worthless
king whom he withstood. This was Stephen
Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury in the time
of King John. Hildebrand had been long gath-
ered to his fathers, but, animated by the same
spirit. Innocent III. now ruled in Rome. During
the pontificate of this Pope it was that, upon his
bended knee. King John resigned his throne and
his crown to the Pope through his Legate, the
Roman Subdeacon, Pandulf.
It was enough. None reach the depth of base-
ness all at once, but John had at last reached it.
He had, however, given what was not his to give;
he had attempted to part with the patrimony of
another, and if he would not wholly lose his throne
he must acknowledge this and repent of his folly.
Magna Charta was the result. Stephen Langton
became the leader of the army of God and Holy
138 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
Church ; and he and the barons, with the whole
English nation at their back, forced from the
king that Charter, which lives still in the Com-
mon Law both of England and America !
But just as if the Archbishop foresaw the rise
of the future heresy, that the national Church
was once a part of the Roman Church, he made
the very first of the sixty-three Clauses to run as
follows:
" That the English Church shall be free, and
have her rights entire and her liberties invi-
olate."
The charter was signed by King John, June 15,
1215; and let us note well that in the judgment
of men who had understanding of the times, the
Church in England, in 121 5, just after the Pope
had asserted himself and his power so unmistak-
ably, was the old Church of the land and not an-
other. Such was the humiliation of the Church
and nation which Innocent III. attempted, al-
though in vain ; but who shall describe the feel-
ings of Innocent? Who will do the Holy Father
the injustice to repeat all he said in the heat of
bafHed passion ? He even annulled, so far as he
could, the charter itself. But as well might he
have bidden the waves roll back at his word.
THE BABYLONIAN BONDAGE 139
Langton had a nation's support, and even John, in
lucid intervals could see this.
" Thou canst not, Cardinal, devise a name
So slight, unworthy, and ridiculous
To charge me to an answer, as the Pope.
Tell him this tale ; and from the mouth of England
Add this much more — that no Italian priest
Shall tithe or toll in our dominions."
Meanwhile the Anglo-American Church goes
on her way. Her ablest sons have shown her
what she ought to do. But oh, that there would
arise a Bishop of Rome imbued with the spirit of
Langton !
There is an old legendary story which tells us
that a certain Pope was once accused before a
Church council of heresy. He was found guilty
and condemned to death. But it was found that
the sentence could not legally be carried out
without the consent of the Pope himself. Then
the fathers of the council went to the Pope and
stated the difficulty ; would he kindly pass judg-
ment on himself. And so moved with pity for
the dilemma in which the Church was placed, he
consented to their prayer. He pronounced judg-
ment upon himself and he was burned ! Where-
upon in gratitude for so heroic an act of self-
I40 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
denial he was canonized and revered as a saint of
the Church. It is a mere tale, but oh, for a new
Pope, like minded, who would even blot out him-
self, if thereby he might help on the unification
of the Catholic Church ; who could go back to
primitive times and Apostolic Episcopate for his
example, and himself proclaim from his lofty
eminence, " The Bishop of Rome is willing hence-
forth to be but one of the chief Bishops of the
Church ; and claims no more to be its chief and
universal Bishop. Christ is the One only real and
true occupant of the throne of the Chief Shep-
herd ! " By doing so he might risk his life, but he
would be the last of the Popes. Infallibility had
then abolished the office, and none could ever
again rise to claim it. The race had come to an
end, like that of the Pharaohs or the Mohican
Indians.
But from the days of Linus, Rome's first
Bishop, to that day, none would have deserved
so well of Christendom. An infallible Pope had
gone, but a Bishop of Rome was left to speak the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,
and to prove himself a man that had understand-
ing of the times, to know what Israel ought to do.
Through that act of simple effacement it would
THE BABYLONIAN BONDAGE 141
and it could not be long ere the Church would be
united again, and there would be once more an
undivided Church, with one Lord, one Faith, one
Baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is
above all, and through all, and in us all.
IX.
AN ANGLICAN ELIJAH
IX.
AN ANGLICAN ELIJAH
"And I, even I only, am left ; and they seek my life, to take
it away." — i Kings xix. lo.
The scene from the description of which these
words are taken is sufficiently striking to have
made for itself a very marked place in your mind.
We need not enlarge upon it. Elijah the prophet
stands forth prominently as the defender of the
old state of things. He pleads for the old altar,
the old worship and the old creed ; he is a be-
liever in the Lord God of Israel, but alas ! he
seems to stand alone. That love of novelty and
desire for change which is so marked a feature of
the human mind, and which exercises so much in-
fluence both for good and evil, had been at work.
But not happily ; the result was wholly evil. It
was not, however, wholly so bad as Elijah im-
agined it was. Looking out on the prospect be-
fore him he contemplated it with the gloomiest
forebodings. It was enough ; his cup of sorrow
146 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
was filled to the brim ; he was ready to die. He
had been very jealous for the Lord God of Hosts,
but all his efforts seemed to have been in vain.
He could see no other man like-minded with him-
self ; he only, of all God's prophets, was left, and
they were seeking his life to take it away !
This whole scene has a wonderful parallel in
Anglican Church history. In the fourteenth
century there rose a man, like another Elijah, who
seemed at times to stand alone, yet he was not
alone. God was with him, and He was making
even his enemies to be at peace with him. At
one time He raised him up a defender in John of
Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, a prince of the blood
royal ; at another He caused the masses of the
people to rise and stand between him and those
who were seeking to take away his life.
This man was John Wyclif, the leading spirit
and the master-mind of all that period — the fore-
runner of the Reformation ; another Elijah ; a
second John the Baptist ; a great schoolman and
yet an earnest parish priest, who had put forth
his hand to the setting up again in all its beauty
of England's spiritual temple.
Wyclif has been called the morning-star of the
Reformation ! and yet he was not the first of the
AN ANGLICAN ELIJAH 147
Reformers. Before him Robert Grostete, Bishop
of Lincoln, and William of Occam had entered
upon the work of Reformation. These were two
great and loyal Churchmen, w^ho had understand-
ing of the times. But when Wyclif came to the
front it must indeed have seemed that God was
with His people ; that He had not cast them away,
but was, on the contrary, giving them such man-
ifest proofs of His love that it was abundantly
clear the national Church of England should not
want a man to stand before Him forever, to be a
witness for the truth once for all delivered to the
saints.
And this long before the sixteenth century !
How foolish and entirely without foundation is
the reproach that the English Reformation was
started by King Henry VHI., and that if it
had not been for that headstrong and ambitious
monarch, there would have been no Reformation
at all ! It is very much as if one should ascribe
the authorship of a book to a man who had but
befriended the publishers of some subsequent
editions ; or as if one should attempt to date the
Independence of America from the passage of the
Fifteenth Amendment. Why do not such peo-
ple learn that the year 1894 comes not before,
148 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
but after the year 1594, and that children are not
the authors of their own parents' existence !
The simple truth is, that the Reformation of
the sixteenth century was not the outgrowth of
one will, nor of the will of one generation of
men. If Henry had never appeared at all, the
English Reformation would all the same have
come to pass. " For the fatherland of the Eng-
lish race," says John Richard Green, *' we must
look far away from England itself." So for the
Reformation of the sixteenth century we must
look far away from the men, and the times of
the sixteenth century. It is Milton who tells us
that had it not been for the obstinate perverse-
ness of the Bishops of that day against the divine
and admirable spirit of Wyclif, and for their en-
deavors to suppress him as a heretic and an inno-
vator, neither the Bohemian Huss and Jerome,
nor yet even Luther and Calvin, would have ever
been heard of. All the glory of the Reformation
might have belonged to that national Church of
which Wyclif was so distinguished an ornament
and so loyal a son.
In Anglican history we have certainly no man
quite like him. Yet there is much resemblance
between him and the German Reformer, Luther.
AN ANGLICAN ELIJAH 149
In one respect, indeed, the resemblance between
them is very striking. It was the glory of each
to give the Holy Scripture to his countrymen in
their native tongue. In boldness and audacity
and in fiery temperament the German stands
easily first ; but who in this respect is like
Luther? As we see him setting at naught the
thunders of Rome and contemptuously burning
her sentence of excommunication against him,
we at once think of that stout warrior of antiquity
who protested that the bolts of Jove himself
would not turn him from his path nor stay his
hand. Here the form of the German Reformer
looms large before men's eyes as they read the
history of those times ; but Wyclif has this dis-
tinction which was denied Luther. He was the
first to tell men what they ought to do. When
Luther lived, the demand for change was no new
thing; the air was already laden with many
sounds and loud voices, all calling for reform.
But in the days of Wyclif, though men felt its
need, and knew that all was not what it should
be, they felt helpless. They were as if in the
dark, waiting for some one to lead them by
the hand. The state of things under which
they had grown up might be all right in theorj^,
ISO LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
but it was plainly and terribly wrong in practice.
What could they do ? Pray ? Yes, we doubt
not they did pray, and that oh, how earnestly !
" Break on this night of longing,
Where hand in hand we grope
Through wastes of vain endeavor,
'Neath stars of fruitless hope.
" Out of our gloom we call Thee,
Out of our helpless night ;
Sun of the world, sweet Saviour,
Show us Thy perfect light ! "
Wyclif was God's answer to their prayer for
light. With him the morning-star of the Refor-
mation arose, and men began to see the way.
Robert Grostete, Bishop of Lincoln, had indeed
refused to confer a canonry on a mere child at
the command of the Pope ; but beyond refusing
obedience where obedience was palpably wrong,
the good Bishop thought not of going. Wyclif,
however, prepared for war — and waited his op-
portunity.
And soon in the providence of God a door was
opened wide. In 1378 Gregory XI. died ; where-
upon the French and the Italians each elected a
rival Pope ; the French selecting Clement VIL,
who dwelt at Avignon, while the Italians chose
AN ANGLICAN ELIJAH 151
Urban VL, who lived at Rome. These rival
Popes at first spent their time excommunicat-
ing each other, but at last appealed to force of
arms to maintain their respective pretensions.
Here was a most unedifying spectacle. A man
needed not then to be more than a sincere lover
of the truth to ask : *' Is such a Papacy indeed of
God's appointment?" Wyclif bade men learn
the lesson of that divided pontificate ; not, indeed,
that it was the first time that there had been
scandalous wrangling for the possession of the
See of Rome, but one of the greatest schoolmen
looked on it now, and with resistless logic argued
that men should surely look elsewhere for their
knowledge of Christianity than to those who
were so shamelessly proving that they did not
know what spirit they were of ; moreover, unto
Avhich of these two militant Popes should they
turn for guidance ; no one could tell them, none
can even now tell which one of the two was
rightful Bishop of Rome. The whole matter is
usually glossed over as '' the great Schism, or the
Babylonish Captivity of the Papacy."
Then Wyclif began to teach men to go to the
Scriptures for the knowledge of the truths of
Christianity rather than to the decrees and tradi-
152 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
tions of a divided Church ; and it was Wyclifs
own great privilege to give his countrymen the
opportunity to read in their own tongue the won-
derful works of God. Parts of the Bible had, as
we have seen, been translated before his day ;
Bede, the Monk of Yarrow, had died whilst trans-
lating St. John's Gospel, and there were others
who had undertaken the noble task ; but it was
reserved for Wyclif first to give a systematic and
complete English translation of the whole Bible,
and so more effectually bring its teaching home
to Englishmen's hearts and consciences, and en-
able them truly to say, " Thy word is a lantern
unto my feet and a light unto my paths."
All honor to Wyclif ! In the time he lived
there was not a man better calculated to do the
work God raised him to do. And yet we may
be thankful that he did not live in the sixteenth
century when the work of reconstruction went
forward. If the Reformation movement then had
been led by Wyclif, he would in all probability
have anticipated Calvin, and instead of Reforma-
tion we should have had Revolution. The Apos-
tolic Episcopal government would probably have
been discarded and a work of wholesale destruc-
tion of ancient forms entered upon. Yet for the
AX ANGLICAN ELIJAH 1 53
special work to which God called him he was ad-
mirably fitted, and he may rightfully take his
place among those who have done good in Israel,
both toward God and toward his house.
For one good thing which Wyclif did, and with-
out which, indeed, he could have done but little
besides, all must have been grateful to him. He
popularized the national Church, for she had for
a long time been intensely unpopular. The old
monastic orders, which had done good service
in an earlier day, had in his time become wealthy
and idle ; whilst even the new orders of mendi-
cant friars, which had invaded every part of the
land, had also lost their original povert}^ and be-
come corrupt and time-serving. But worse than
all, there was even general discontent against the
Church's doctrines, when Wyclif appeared as a
reformer. His disciples numbered at one time a
third of the population of the whole country. It
is rarely, however, that any great popular move-
ment can be held in check by those who first set
it in motion. It was so then. The Lollards, as
Wyclif's followers were called, soon became a
menace to the nation. From attacking abuses in
the Church they passed, naturally enough, to
attacking abuses in the State. Then a civil re-
154 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
bellion of such alarming proportions arose, that it
threatened to sweep away all authority both in
Church and State. The cry of the mob was for
perfect equality, and their popular song was :
" When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman ? "
Perfect equality ! Oh what a dream of dreams is
this! In what has God made men equal ? We dif-
fer from one another in a thousand different ways.
Humanity lies between two points very far apart,
but we can understand the cry well enough, and
we do not hold Wyclif responsible for its being
raised. Like the modern Socialists and Anarch-
ists, the Lollards howled for the abolishment of law
and order, and a redistribution of all property.
Wyclif died in 1384, and was buried beneath
the chancel of his own church of Lutterworth.
Years after — incredible sacrilege ! — his body was
exhumed and burned, and the ashes cast into an
adjoining brook. But the brook bore them to
the ocean, and carried them — emblematic of the
doctrines he preached — into all the world.
" Wyclif disinhumed,
Yea, his dry bones to ashes are consumed
And flung into the brook that travels near.
AN ANGLICAN ELIJAH 1 55
Forthwith that ancient Voice which streams can hear
Thus speaks (that Voice which walks upon the wind
Though seldom heard by busy humankind),
' As thou these ashes, little brook, wilt bear
Into the Avon, Avon to the tide
Of Severn, Severn to the narrow seas,
Into main ocean they, this deed accurst ;
An emblem yields to friends and enemies,
How the bold teacher's doctrine, sanctified
By truth, shall spread, throughout the world dispersed.' "
We have spoken of friars and monks ; of mon-
asteries and nunneries. Were these not orders
and institutions of the Roman Catholic Church,
you may ask. No ; they were the orders and in-
stitutions of our own Church as it then existed.
Long before the Reformation, and to a great ex-
tent from Wyclif's teaching, it was felt that their
work had been fulfilled and they might pass
away. At the Reformation they were abolished
as being no longer serviceable ; but while they
existed they were parts of the machinery, not of
an}^ foreign Church, but of the national Church
of the land ; a Church which, as we have seen,
clung to all its rights through many and great
vicissitudes, never failing to preserve its identity,
and to keep unbroken its connection with the
Church of the Lord and His Apostles.
156 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
This Church was now on the eve of purifying
her house from the effects of evil communica-
tions ; but we have spoken to little purpose unless
we have shown clearly that, whether under the
rule of Cassar, when Britain was but a province
of Rome's vast empire, or under the Saxon, Dan-
ish, and Norman kings, it was always the same
Church ; and that even in the darkest and dreari-
est period, when only solitary voices pleaded for
truth, God had not left Himself without wit-
ness ; there were even then thousands in Israel
who had not bowed the knee, nor kissed the
image of Baal ; yea, though a prophet of its own
could truthfully say, " They seek my life to take
it away ! '*
X.
THE END OF CAPTIVITY
X.
THE END OF CAPTIVITY
" Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see and ask
for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein." —
Jeremiah vi. i6.
This does not mean, as is sometimes supposed,
" stand up and ask for the old paths, and never
move from them, for there is the right way."
The true meaning is very different; for the words
are a call to rise up and stand in the ways and
look about and inquire of the old ways which is
the right way and then to walk in it. Among
those old ways our feet may be standing in the
wrong, and we must therefore take good heed
and find out the right.
Now on the eve of that break with Rome in the
sixteenth century, which we term the Reforma-
tion, no more appropriate word could have been
spoken than this : '' Stand ye in the ways, and see
and ask for the old paths." Never in all their
long history had Anglican Churchmen greater
l60 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
need for strength and patience. The very foun-
dations were endangered, and what could the
righteous do? It was a time of well-nigh univer-
sal change. Yet by divine Providence those who
were then leading our Church were not revolu-
tionists ; they would do nothing rashly. They
justly conceived of their work as the work of
Reformation only, and they always seemed to hear
a summons bidding them find their model in
purer and better times. Accordingly they bent
all their energies to the freeing of our Church
from the unscriptural and uncatholic domination
of a foreign Bishop.
In this great work of Reformation, England's
Declaration of Independence in ecclesiastical mat-
ters curiously anticipates America's Declaration
of Independence in matters political. Whilst
America was subject to the British Empire, a con-
sciousness of her destiny was ever stealing in
upon thoughtful men. It was one of the wisest
of these who said, '* As soon as x\merica can take
care of herself, she will do what Carthage did."
And yet from a final separation from England,
the Colonists instinctively turned away. They
still naturally looked upon England as the ancient
home of their fathers, and they regarded her laws
THE END OF CAPTIVITY l6l
and customs as their own just inheritance. Yet
they emphatically denied that their English kins-
men had any rights over them. They were all
equal, they were all free. But this, which none
deny now, was not admitted then ; and separation
inevitably came. And as it was in the days of
the foolish King Rehoboam, so again it was in the
days of the foolish and incapable George III.
The king would use force, but the God of nations
interposed ; " return every man to his house in
peace, for this thing is from Me."
And now for the parallel. It is indeed close
and exact. The great body of the English people
had, in the course of the Norman period, learned
to love the Roman Church and to wish her pros-
perity. Yet they never thought of her as having
any rights over them. When, therefore, that
Roman Church, forgetting that she was at best no
more than a sister, began to imagine herself the
mother and mistress of Churches, to claim abso-
lute power and dominion, and even to attempt to
withdraw liberties which the English Church had
enjoyed ever since apostolic men had taught her
the truth and made her free ; when she tried to
annul Magna Charta itself (which declared that
the English Church was anciently and forever
1 62 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
free) ; when she attempted to deprive the people
of England of their inalienable and time-honored
right of choosing their own Bishops and chief
pastors, then the action of the American colonies
was anticipated by over two centuries, and the
English Church declared that, for the future, she
would look after her own affairs.
Now what is a commoner charge against our
Church than that she is a new body, built on the
ruins of the old Roman Church of England.
Many of the Bishops and clergy and a few of the
educated lait}^ of that Church know better, but
the rank and file are taught differently. And as
for Presbyterians, Methodists, Congregationalists,
and Baptists, however kindly disposed toward
us they may be, they would as soon think of be-
coming Roman Catholics as of ceasing to believe
that in the sixteenth century the Church of Eng-
land was a little babe in swaddling-clothes, which,
having had Henry VIII. as its foster-father and
Queen Elizabeth as its nursing mother, had at
last grown up to vigorous life. This is history
indeed, if we can call that history compared with
which the stories of Grimm's goblins and Hans
Andersen's fairy tales are sober truth.
Our forefathers would have been startled by
THE END OF CAPTIVITY 1 63
any such view. They did not see before their
eyes a delicate and puny infant wailing its neces-
sities in the ears of royal foster-parents. What
they saw was their own strong and vigorous
Church, into which they had been born, and
which for over one thousand years had been in
sole possession of the land, a Church which, older
than the state itself, had done more than all other
forces to make England what she was.
The Church's own Reformation Prayer Book
asserts this with unfaltering voice. And its testi-
mony has this peculiar value, that it is contempo-
raneous testimony taken upon the spot. In the
preface to that book, w^hich is attributed to Arch-
bishop Cranmer, whom the Rom^ans afterward
burned as a Reformer in the market-place at
Oxford, are these words : " The service in this
Church of England, these many years, hath been
read in Latin to the people, which they under-
stand not; so that they have heard with their
ears only."
Plainly, in the judgment of the reforming Arch-
bishop, the Church which proposed now to read
the service in English was the same Church
which had previously read it in Latin. In his
mind there v/as no break in the continuity of the
l64 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
Church's life or organization, she was merely re-
forming evil customs.
In the reign of Alfred, King of England (871-
901), the Church leased a piece of property to the
crov/n for nine hundred and ninety-nine years.
A few years ago the term of the lease expired,
and on a question arising as to what body was en-
titled to the property, the courts decided it be-
longed of right to the present Church of England
as the original owner. But this decision was, as
is well known, a part of a larger question. All
Church property in England is legally held upon
the principle that the Church of England of to-
day is one and the same as the Church of Eng-
land under the Heptarchy and all subsequent
kings. The muniments of title to all the cathe-
drals, and to Westminster Abbey itself, the most
national of all the churches there, are involved in
this legal presumption. But we have only to see
how the " Anglicana Ecclesia " in Magna Charta
is carefully distinguished from that " Sanctae Ro-
manse Ecclesise," which is also there mentioned,
to see that this is no presumption merely. Even
Bede speaks of the " Ecclesia Anglorum," and
never is there a hint that she was ever anything
else.
THE END OF CAPTIVITY 1 65
It is true, alas, that this national Church was
not always free from foreign dictation ; that for
years she lay, as Samson, bound, but the bondage
destroyed not her ancient character. Rightly did
she claim her freedom. " Our records," said
Queen Elizabeth, "show that the papal jurisdic-
tion over this realm was usurpation." How like
this reply to that made by William the Conquer-
or to Hildebrand, more than five hundred years
before.
Think of what the Popes were, and you will see
not only how needful this declaration of indepen-
dence was, but that it was made none too soon.
Men had to look away in horror and dismay
when they beheld all evil triumphant in the per-
sons of men calling themselves Vicars of Christ.
It was this, first, that set men thinking. When
such a creature as the wretched Alexander VI.
sat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself
the Lord's anointed, had men been silent the
very stones would have cried out against their
silence and their apathy.
Then there were other and infinitely greater
causes at work. The old social order which had
prevailed throughout Western Europe was pass-
ing away. The spell of the past — the spell of
l66 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
custom and tradition — which had enchained the
minds of men, was roughly broken, and an era of
free thought had dawned.
Great physical changes, too, were also contrib-
uting largely to that spirit of inquiry and that
search for truth which was behind the Reforma-
tion movement. The world was, in fact, passing
through wonderful changes. Its physical bounds
had been suddenly enlarged. Portuguese mari-
ners had sailed around the Cape of Good Hope.
Columbus had crossed the ocean in search of a
nearer way to the Asiatic main, and had died pro-
fessing his belief that he had found it. Sebastian
Cabot, starting from Bristol, had threaded his
way among the icebergs of Labrador, and thence
sailed southward along the North American
coast till he saw the shores of Florida.
The Reformation of the sixteenth century was
an answer to the demands of the age. Firmly,
but gently, and in canonical order, the Anglican
Church reasserted her independence and en-
shrined for all time a main principle of the Refor-
mation in these words: "The Bishop of Rome
hath no greater jurisdiction in this realm of Eng-
land than any other foreign Bishop."
Reformation under these conditions was as nat-
THE END OF CAPTIVITY 1 6/
ural as that day should follow night. But we
may be told that we have not mentioned the
divorce of Henry VIII. To assign that miserable
and protracted lawsuit as a cause of the Refor-
mation, is very much like saying that the loss of
the fifth wheel disables the coach. But many of
us have travelled in four-wheeled coaches in per-
fect safety. Some years ago it is said the Queen
of England arrived at Dover, and not being met
with the usual royal salute she asked the com-
mander of the port why the salute was omitted,
who at once replied, " Please your Majesty there
are several reasons, but the first is we have no
guns." The Reformation of the sixteenth century
was a European matter. A little stone had been
cut out of the mountain, without hands, which was
destined to break the great image of folly and
superstition which had been silently set up in
Christendom. With the breaking of that image
England was well content. She had no war but
with error. Her Reformers sought only the old
and good way that they might walk therein.
With Henry VIII., individually, we have noth-
ing to do. He was no Bishop of the Church,
nor was he a good man. Nor was he even a
Reformer at all. He was a supporter of most
l68 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
of the mediaeval doctrines, and punished dissent
from them with the sword. By his unprincipled
treatment of the Church and his shameless rob-
bery of her funds, he inflicted untold injury upon
her. Yet he could not stem the resistless tide,
and during his reign the Reformation was in the
main accomplished. The Scriptures had been
given to the people in their own tongue, a
Prayer Book in English begun, and the return
to primitive and apostolic doctrines inaugurated.
But it was in its conservative character that
the Anglican Reformation differed so widely from
that of Europe generally. There, not reforma-
tion but revolution was to be seen. Let us never
fail to realize that here was the vital difference
between the reform in England, and elsewhere.
During the French Revolution the king, looking
out on the mob from the Tuileries said : '' This
is riot," the reply was : " Sire, it is revolution."
When the smoke of battle rolled away in the re-
ligious warfare of the sixteenth century through-
out Germany and Switzerland, and elsewhere
on the continent of Europe, a new Church had
arisen, a Church without Bishops and without
a past. A new thing had appeared under the
sun.
THE END OF CAPTIVITY 1 69
In England, however, the old Church still lived.
And she to-day, both in England and America,
looks back with deep thankfulness over the ages,
and sees no break in her continuity from first to
last.
In Baltimore, of all the cities in America, the
clergy and people of the American Church need
to be rooted and grounded in the history of their
Church. For here, more than elsewhere, do they
hear insidious suggestions against her. '' 'Tis a
trembling shadow, whilst the Church of Rome is
the solid rock." Remember how Tennyson puts
this sentiment into the mouth of Cardinal Pole as
he addresses Lord Paget :
" Tremble, my Lord,
The Church on Peter's rock ? Never !
I have seen
A pine in Italy that cast its shadow
Athwart a cataract ; firm stood the pine,
The cataract shook the shadow. To my mind
The cataract typed the headlong plunge and fall
Of heresy to the pit ; the pine was Rome.
You see, my Lord,
It was the shadow of the Church that trembled ;
Your Church was but the shadow of a Church,
Wanting the papal mitre."
— Queen Mary, Act iii., Sc. iv.
170 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
This is no poet's language merely. It is, ac-
cording to some, only the sober teaching of his-
tory. And are the clergy of this American
Church to be silent and let this pass unchal-
lenged ? Are they to be as dumb dogs ? Are they
to be hearers only, may they never reply ? Are
they to be as sentries posted on the walls of forti-
fied towns, who seeing the enemy coming to at-
tack, while all are asleep trusting to their watch-
fulness and care, yet utter no sound and give
no warning? Perish the thought. We attack
none, but we claim the liberty of self-defence.
We dare not accept any gagged responsibility.
Whether they will hear or whether they will
forbear, we must preach the Gospel ; yea, woe is
unto us if we preach not the Gospel.
There is little to encourage us to keep silent,
even if we would, as we contemplate the actual
working of the Anglican and Roman Churches.
By their fruits ye shall know them. Let Rome
look to her own house and set that in order.
Italy has deprived the Pope of his temporal
power. Spain has come down in the world.
Austria is weak. France is sneering at religion
and has legalized divorce. Mexico and the South
American republics are but thinly disguised bar-
THE END OF CAPTIVITY 1 71
barisms. Yet these are Roman Catholic powers.
Perhaps religion has nothing to do with w^hat
they are. Yet God does say, " Righteousness ex-
alteth a nation," and we mark Avith satisfaction
and thankfulness that the Anglo-Saxon nations,
taught by our own beloved INIother, stand in the
van of all commercial activity, of all intellectual
progress, and of all religious thought.
XL
THE RESTORATION
XI.
THE RESTORATION
" This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes."
— Psalm cxviii. 23.
Henry VIII. left behind him three children
— Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth. And if one were
to describe these children by terms with which
we are now familiar, we should say that the first
was a Puritan, the second a Roman Catholic, and
the third an Anglican. It is certainly not a little
remarkable that in one family there should have
been such divisions, and it is still more remark-
able that all three should in turn have come to
the throne of England, and from that elevated
position have given to the world a practical il-
lustration of the working and characteristics of
the three systems of religion — Puritanism, Roman
Catholicism, and Anglicanism that is pure Catho-
licism. In this respect the family of Henry VI 1 1,
affords us one of the most striking object-lessons
iy6 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
which can be found in the whole field of eccle-
siastical history.
Prince Edward was of the stuff of which Puri-
tans are made. His reign has been called the seven
years' reign of an infant, for he was but sixteen
years old when he died ; but he had for an infant
a remarkably strong will. Of the Tudor race, he
knew well what he wanted, and was set to accom-
plish it. He had no love for the Church nor ap-
preciation of her apostolic character, and his one
aim seemed to be to get as near as possible to the
new communities founded by the German and
Swiss Reformers. And had his reign continued,
it is easy to conjecture what would have befallen
the old national Church of England. As it was,
the iconoclasm of the true Puritans was antici-
pated. For the first time in England, men calling
themselves Christians '' broke down all the carved
work thereof with axes and hammers, and defiled
the dwelling-places of the Most High." There
were men who seemed to have a perfect horror
of worshipping God ^' in the beauty of holiness."
The one thing in connection with the Church
they had no antipathy to, was her property. But
the robber of the Church is the robber of God,
and the Lord is mindful of His own.
THE RESTORATION 1 7/
" They tell us that the Lord of Hosts will not avenge His own ;
They tell us that He careth not for temples overthrown ;
Go look through England's thousand vales, and show me, he
that may,
The abbey lands that have not wrought their owner's swift
decay."
The reign of this Puritan boy came to an end
on July 6, 1553. But young as he was, he had
the spirit of his father before him and of every
English king who had struggled for freedom
against foreign interference. His last prayer de-
serves to be remembered for its sublime patriot-
ism : '' O Lord God, defend this realm from Pa-
pistry and maintain Thy true religion." It re-
minds us of the prayer of Oswald, the sainted
King of Northumbria, on behalf of his Christian
subjects, as he fell fighting against the heathen
King of the Mercians, " Lord have mercy on their
souls ! "
Mary, whose reign came next, was the Roman
Catholic of the family. The daughter of the dis-
carded Catherine of Aragon, she owed her zeal
for the unreformed religion to her Spanish moth-
er's training. Oh, mothers, what a power for
good or evil is yours ! It was a true answer
which, in reply to the question, what was the
178 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
great want of the French nation, said, *' Moth-
ers." Give us earnest, conscientious, and relig-
ious mothers, and the future of any nation is as-
sured.
Mary's mother had made her a faithful disciple
of the Italian Bishop. As soon as she became
queen, she set herself to restore all the mediaeval
practices which had been abandoned. Step by
step she proceeded to undo all that her father or
brother had done. The English Prayer Book
was proscribed, the English Bible was banished ;
old statutes against heresy were brought forward
and solemnly promulgated afresh, and she set
definitely before her, as a religious duty, to do
what no English sovereign before her had ever at-
tempted save the infamous John, she would force
her people into the house of bondage. By the be-
ginning of 155S) the arena was cleared and that
frightful tragedy was begun in which an Archbish-
op, four Bishops, twenty-one clergymen, fifty-five
women, four children, and two hundred and three
other persons were to be burned at the stake.
We are not about to harrow your feelings with
any minute description of those terrible outrages.
Our work is not to show the folly of Roman per-
secution, it is the pleasanter duty of showing the
THE RESTORATION 1 79
wisdom of Anglican toleration. That particular
persecution, indeed, inflicted on Rome such irre-
parable injury that she has since again and again
vainly tried to escape the responsibility for it
And if we are to judge from the loud praises
(with which all Marylanders are familiar) which
are now lavished upon the spirit of toleration
from unexpected quarters, we may assume that
the error has been seen, and that the Anglican
method has been generally recognized as the
more excellent way.
Mary herself foresaw it, and weakened by ill-
health and realizing the failure of all her cherished
plans, died broken-hearted after a short reign of
five years. In her life and reign men saw, or
thought they saw, the good and evil of the Roman
system, its virtues and its defects, and they con-
demned it. She had made a strong and deter-
mined effort to graft it upon English Christianity
but without success. On November 17, I5S8,
Mary breathed her last, and her sister Eliza-
beth, almost without opposition, '' reigned in her
stead."
The third and last of Henry's children now sat
upon the throne. In Elizabeth's reign men were
to see the practical working of the true Anglican
l8o LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
Catholicism, which is the unifying power of all
Anglo-Saxon Christendom to this very day.
In Hatfield Park a tree is still pointed out
where Elizabeth was sitting when she received
the news of her peaceable accession to the throne.
At once she fell on her knees, and drawing a long
deep breath, exclaimed, " It is the Lord's doing,
and it is marvellous in our eyes." Just as the
coins of the United States now bear the words
" In God we trust," so to the last of her reign
those words were stamped upon the golden coin-
age of the queen.
And there was a singular appropriateness in
these words. They were spoken originally with
reference to a proverb. " The same stone which
the builders refused is become the head of the
corner." We have no means of knowing whether
or not they refer to any historical event, but
whatever the origin of the proverb, as commonly
used, it referred to a people rejected and cast
away.
As the Princess Elizabeth she had been neg-
lected, her birth had once been declared illegiti-
mate, but she was now restored. The stone
which the builders rejected had truly become
the headstone in the corner. '' This was the
THE RESTORATION l8l
Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes."
We remember again God's words : ** This thing
is from Me ! " Plainly this was one of God's
providences. To Him who is King of Kings and
Lord of Lords, who putteth down one and setteth
up another, does the Church owe it that, in the
most critical period of all her long history Eliza-
beth arose as a mother in Israel. The queen
herself felt that her preservation from the many
perils which had threatened her life was due to
the direct interposition of God.
Elizabeth's accession was the signal for the
quenching of the fires of persecution. She put
none to death for religious convictions. She was
the type of a true Anglican Churchwoman. If,
later in her reign, there were some that died for
their opinions, it was not because those opinions
were religious, but because they were political ;
not because they were regarded as dangerous to
the spiritual welfare of the nation, but because
they threatened destruction to the state. This
is the glory of Elizabeth. Throughout her long
reign, save a few Anabaptists who seemed to
menace the social order, no heretic was sent '' to
the fire."
And her Anglican policy of toleration met
l82 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
with its reward. Gradually the mediaeval prac-
tices of Mary's reign fell into disuse, and the ce-
remonial of the later years of Henry became the
standard of ritual and of practice. Slowly great
changes were taking place, and habits were be-
coming crystallized. But so wisely did she act,
that the mass of the nation were not conscious
that they were making an epoch in Anglican
Church history.
The old Rectors, with few exceptions, remained
in their parishes and ministered as of old. The
new Prayer Book was for the most part an Eng-
lish rendering of the old service — yet English
and not Roman. Even those who sighed for the
leeks and garlic of Egypt attended the public
services and saw but little with which to find
fault. Sometimes, where feeling ran high, dif-
ficulties were removed by compromise. The
priest would celebrate mass at his house for the
more conservative members of his flock, whilst to
the others he would administer the Communion
in church according to the Reformed service.
Sometimes all knelt together at the same altar-
rail, some to receive wafers previously consecrat-
ed after the old usage, others to receive wafers
consecrated in church after the new. In many
THE RESTORATION 1 83
parishes in the North no change at all was made.
Such a state of things seems to us little better
than chaos. But chaos is better than war.
Yet the gains were substantial and permanent.
All submission to Rome was at an end. The re-
formed Book of Common Prayer was now the
Prayer Book of the land. The Sacraments were
restored to their proper place. The Scriptures
were read in the language of the people. The
Bishoprics were filled w^ith men who had been
rightly consecrated, and not for many a long day
was there a breath of suggestion that there was
a flaw anywhere. Under Matthew Parker, the
new Archbishop of Canterbury, England seemed,
at the close of 1559, to be quietly settling down
to enjoy peace. This peace, however, was to be
rudely broken. As a Bishop of Rome was respon-
sible for the lamentable schism between the Greek
and Roman communions, so another Bishop of
Rome was to be the cause of a schism, almost
as disastrous, between the Roman and Anglican
communions; but not before striking testimon}^
had been given to the uncalled-for and entirely
gratuitous nature of his interference in the affairs
of our national Church.
It was, strange to tell, reserved, in the provi-
1 84 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
dence of God, for a Bishop of Rome to declare
the validity of Anglican orders, and to assert his
belief that the Anglican Church had all things es-
sential to her Catholicity. Indeed the worthy
Bishop, Pius IV. (who did this), might have said
to English Churchmen, " What more could I have
done for you than I have done?" To whom
they might have graciously replied, " Nothing,
absolutely nothing. We thank you for your
words of approval and the evidence of your good-
will. We may not, however, accept 3^our offered
leadership, for, under Christ, we obey the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury, of whom one of your
own predecessors has spoken as * the Pope of
another world.' "
The circumstances are these: In 1560 Pius
IV. made overtures to Elizabeth for a reconcilia-
tion ; and the overtures he made practically con-
cede the Anglican position as right. He under-
took to give his approval of all that had been
done during the Reformation period, provided
his authority were recognized. So important is
this evidence that I give you the very words as
they occur in Butler's '' Historical Memoirs of
the Catholics," pubHshed in London, 1822. It is
especially valuable as coming from a Roman
THE RESTORATION 185
Catholic, though the truth of the statement is not
called into question.
'' In May, 1560, Pius IV." (says Butler) ^' sent
Vincentio Parpalio to the queen with a letter,
most earnestly but respectfully entreating her to
return to the bosom of the Church. Parpalio
was instructed to offer to the queen that the
Pope would annul the sentence of Clement, his
predecessor, against her mother's marriage, settle
the Liturgy by his authority, and grant to the
English the use of the Sacraments in both kinds.
Parpalio reached Brussels, and from that place
he acquainted the English ministry with the ob-
ject of his mission, and proceeded to Calais. The
propriety of admitting him was debated in the
Royal Council and determined in the negative."
Doubtless the queen and her Council had be-
fore their eyes the first clause of Magna Charta :
" The Church of England shall be free and hold
her rights entire and her liberties inviolate."
Ten years rolled away, and another effort was
made, this time by Pius V., successor of Pius IV.
Paul IV. had tried threats. Pius IV. had sought
the same end by persuasion. Then came Pius
v., to whose fiery faith every means of warfare
seemed hallowed by the sanctity of his cause.
1 86 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
He sent forth, in the year 1570, his spiritual
thunders. Excommunication was the dread sen-
tence lighting upon all who would not withdraw
from their parish churches. A few, a very few,
obeyed his bidding, and the second Italian mis-
sion in England dates from this act and time.
But a blight seems to have been always upon it;
it has never prospered. Notwithstanding the
terribly stagnant period of the Georges, when
the national Church, settled upon her lees, was
doing nothing, it grew not. Even to-day it num-
bers less than a million, though founded more than
three centuries ago. It is but a feeble schism ;
the smallest and youngest aspirant to spiritual
power in England.
After Pius came Sixtus V., who, seeing that
threats, persuasion, and spiritual censure had all
alike failed, tried arms. Spain at that time was mis-
tress of the seas and the first power of the world.
To Philip of Spain Sixtus opened the Papal treas-
ury, if he would invade the heretic realm. Philip
needed no pressing. With vast possessions in
both worlds, he longed to extend them. Eng-
land was to him Naboth's vineyard. The Pope's
offer was as cold spring water to a thirsty man.
He eagerly seized it. Three hundred priests
THE RESTORATION 187
under the Jesuit Father Allen were sent into
England to spread dissatisfaction and to under-
mine the government, while Spain prepared the
mightiest navy ever seen. At last all was ready.
On July 9, 1588, the sails of the Spanish Armada
appeared off the Lizard, and the beacons flared
out their alarm all along the coast,
" Till Skiddaw saw the fire that burned
On Gaunt's embattled pile,
And the red glare on Skiddaw roused
The burghers of Carlisle."
It was a mighty array. The stoutest hearts
might have quaked at the sight. It was in its
overwhelming greatness like the host of Sen-
nacherib of which Byron sings :
" The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold,
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea
When the blue waves roll nightly in deep Galilee."
Yet vast as was the host, the enemy did not trust
in it alone. The three hundred emissaries had
been sowing disaffection broadcast. How could
success be doubtful? There was overwhelming
strength, a disaffected people eagerly watching
for them, and the Papal blessing as well !
1 88 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
But the Queen's toleration had borne its fruits.
Now was to be seen the wisdom of that policy.
Englishmen, however much they might love the
old ritual, had no mind to go into bondage. The
Jesuit leader had assured the King of Spain that
the bulk of the Nation would rise as soon as
a strong Spanish force was landed on English
ground. He even gave the names of those who
would lead. The Earls of Arundel, Northum-
berland, Worcester, Cumberland, Oxford, and
Southampton were among these. Yet observe
what followed. In the presence of the stranger
religious strife was silent. Of the nobles and
squires whose tenants were to muster under the
flag of the invader, not one proved a traitor; and
in the defence against the Armada the vessels of
Cumberland, Oxford, and Northumberland fought
side by side with those of Drake and Howard.
Mark, again, we say, the wisdom of the Anglican
policy. As the result of it, the great Armada was
scattered. The Lord fought for England as in
the times gone by He had fought for Israel,
when they saw the Egyptians dead upon the sea-
shore. The rugged coasts of Scotland and Ire-
land were covered with wrecks. On the strand
near Sligo, an English captain counted eleven
THE RESTORATION 1 89
hundred corpses which had been cast up by the
sea. Poor men ! The Papal blessing had not
helped them !
England acknowledged her debt to God. His
was the victory, not theirs.
" The might of the Gentiles, unsmote by the sword,
Had melted like snow in the glance of the Lord."
On the medal that commemorated the triumph,
the words were engraved " The Lord sent His
word and scattered them." With the fall of the
Armada, Spanish supremacy vanished utterly
away. Ambition and the Papal blessing thus
proved Spain's ruin. One century later, and
Spain was stripped of the bulk of the Nether-
lands ; another, and her possessions in Italy had
vanished ; yet a third, and her dominions in the
New World were taken away. Her fall has been
clearly traced to the loss of her maritime ascen-
dency at that overwhelming catastrophe in the
wreck of the grand Armada, when her power was
broken, her influence destroyed, and her prestige
forever taken away.
England, on the contrary, from that day for-
ward took the first place. " God putteth down
one and setteth up another," He evidently ex-
190 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
alted the nation whose Church had kept " the
faith once for all delivered to the saints," and
which had put their trust in His Word and Sac-
raments. And mightily has He since blessed that
Church. In His own providence He has made
her the teacher of the most progressive nations
of the modern world. He has made it possible
for her rightly to claim as her heritage, to be
used for Him, the better part of this New World,
which was even then looming up wondrous large
before the eyes of men.
Never since the sixteenth century has the Latin
Church been able to recommend herself to the
more intellectual and cultured classes. In lands
where she holds sway the upper classes have for
the most part relapsed into dreary scepticism.
Her power is almost entirely confined to the illit-
erate. As education spreads she will lose ground
even more rapidly ; while the stream which
makes for true Catholicism will flow on more
steadily and more widely. Converts will come in
greater numbers. Already do they come in not
inconsiderably. Over seven hundred adult Ro-
man Catholics has the present Bishop of Iowa
received with his own hand into our Church
since he has been Bishop, and all his Episcopal
THE RESTORATION I9I
brethren around him have similar reports to
make.
Let us trust God to deal wisely with His peo-
ple. Men saw ultra - Protestantism in Edward,
and they liked it not ; again they saw ultra-mon-
tanism in Mary, and they liked it no better. But
they rejoiced when they saw the old faith in Eliz-
abeth free from Papal superstition and Puritan
innovation.
Elizabeth's work was great indeed. What
Wolsey had desired to see and Henry had but
dreamed of, she accomplished. But the princi-
ple of her action was the true Anglican principle
of respecting the rights and consciences of others.
She remembered that the weapons of spiritual
warfare are not carnal. The secular sword she
never used to punish religious error. To the
Great Judge of All, men were responsible for
their spiritual life. She was a civil governor;
and if men would dwell in peace and quietness in
her realm, obeying the secular laws without of-
fence, they were never molested by her. By that
policy she welded together into one harmonious
whole, a nation which had been as divided in
religious sentiment as her own father's family.
When Puritanism failed and Roman Catholicism
192 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
was found wanting, in that very field and on that
very stage she had shown the power of the Angli-
can Church.
Our debt to her is great. At times she herself
must have been amazed at the success of her
changes. But the cause was of God ; and when
she came to die, she might well have recalled
those words spoken under the old tree in Hatfield
many years before, and engraved on her golden
coins, as abundantly made good to her :
" This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous
in our eyes."
XII.
THE NAG'S HEAD FABLE
XII.
THE NAG'S HEAD FABLE
AN APOCRYPHAL STORY
'• The elders which are among you I exhort, who am also an
elder." — i Peter v i.
In the first four verses of this chapter we find
exhortations addressed to the official heads and
leaders of the Church. Beginning with the fifth
verse we have exhortations to the younger and
subordinate members of the ministry, but the
four opening verses are strictly an address to the
older members. There the highest authorities of
the Church are exhorted to the discharge of their
own special duties.
Now these words have a great historical inter-
est to ever}^ true Churchman, for they were the
text of a sermon preached at a very great crisis
in the history of our Church. It was when Mat-
thew Parker was consecrated Archbishop of Can-
terbury that the Bishop of Chichester, having
chosen these words for his text, preached, as the
196 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
Register at Lambeth tells us, " not inelegantly."
What made this consecration a great crisis, a
very turning-point, in the history of our Church, a
simple illustration will readily help us to see. We
are all familiar with the appearance which North
and South America present on the atlas. We
see the northern continent tapering away toward
the south, until there is but a slender band con-
necting it with the southern continent. And on
the other hand, beginning with that same slen-
der band, the southern continent opens out and
spreads until it becomes a vast continent watered
by the mightiest of rivers, and covered with the
densest of forests. So slender is this band — this
isthmus, which in reality makes these two conti-
nents one — that many attempts have been made
to cut it through and let the waters of the Atlan-
tic and Pacific meet together ; but up to the pres-
ent time every such attempt has been a disas-
trous failure, bringing nothing but confusion and
trouble upon those who have attempted it, dis-
crediting them before the eyes of all the world,
indeed ruining and disgracing them.
Now in a similar way the Episcopate of the
Anglican Communion, before and after the Refor-
mation, may be likened to the configuration of the
THE nag's head FABLE 197
land in the Western world. Before the Refor-
mation that Episcopate was a mighty body ; after
the Reformation it again became, as it is to-day,
a mighty body also. But at the beginning of
Elizabeth's reign, in the midst of the Reformation
period, it had its isthmus, its narrow connecting
band, so slender that some have attempted to cut
it through, nay, to assert that it was cut through,
and that the river of time flowed between. But
as it was with those who attempted to pierce the
material isthmus, so was it here. Only utter con-
fusion has awaited them and they have retired
discomfited, confessing that they had undertaken
more than they could perform ; that they had
asserted more than they could prove.
Let us see if these things are not so. When
Queen Mary's death occurred, a plague was rag-
ing in England which was in truth no respecter
of persons. It entered with equal impartiality
the Bishop's palace and the cottage of the peas-
ant. It struck down the Archbishop of Canter-
bury, who stood then, as he stands now, next in
rank to the princes of the blood royal —
" Chief prelate of our Church, Archbishop, first
In council/ second person in the realm,"
igS LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
It spared not the Bishops, and this at a time
when, owing to the changes taking place, some
had been deprived of their bishoprics or had vol-
untarily resigned them. For awhile it seemed
as if the Apostolic line in England was about
to become extinct. But God willed otherwise.
The isthmus of the Reformed Episcopate re-
mained intact. There were but few left to pre-
serve that sacred heritage, but these were enough
and more than enough to make manifest unto
all men that God had not cast away His people
whom He foreknew, but lovingly abode with
them still.
Now all men rightly believed then that no man
could be made a Bishop except by a Bishop.
The belief in Apostolic succession is simply a
matter of history. It does not admit of a rea-
sonable doubt that from the first century to the
sixteenth men, rightly or wrongly, unquestiona-
bly believed that none could be ministers of the
Church unless they had been ordained by Bish-
ops. Not even, in their judgment, could the
Archangels Michael and Gabriel — had they ap-
peared in the midst of the congregation robed in
surplice of dazzling whiteness and in stole of
heavenly richness — have made men ministers of
THE NAG'S HEAD FABLE 199
our God. *' Those only they judged lawfully
called or sent who had been sent by men who
had had public authority given unto them to
call and send laborers into the Lord's vineyard."
Least of all could any man take this honor unto
himself but he that was called of God, as was
Aaron.
There are some nowadays who profess to be-
lieve that this is not necessary. Yet, strangely
enough, the most intensely Protestant sects of
to-day do not now countenance the ordination of
preachers by mere laymen. It matters not that
to laymen they must eventually retrace their or-
ganic existence. All denominations now insist
upon some ministerial ordination for their minis-
ters.
What is this but a recognition of the ancient
doctrine of Apostolic Succession ? There is in
fact no difference between us and them in doc-
trine, but only in practice. Our Church has main-
tained this succession for eighteen hundred years,
while the various Protestant religious organiza-
tions around us have but practised it for three
hundred years or less ; our Church has carried
back the chain to the Apostles of the Lord ; other
bodies to their first founders and organizers, lay-
200 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
men or clergymen, as is expressed in the coup-
let:
" Wesley his hand on Coke hath laid.
But who laid hands on him ? "
Compare with this the example and teaching of
Christ :
" His twelve Apostles first He made
His ministers of grace,
And they their hands on others laid
To fill in turn their place."
Happily the Catholic Church in England, in
the sixteenth century, believed all this and
preached all this. Now the first to be conse-
crated under Elizabeth was Matthew Parker,
who became Archbishop of Canterbury under
such circumstances that one would have sup-
posed his formal and canonical consecration
could never have been questioned.
And yet this reasonable expectation was
doomed to disappointment. Some forty years
after that consecration, a story w^as circulated to
the effect that he had never been duly conse-
crated. This story is known commonly as " The
Nag's Head Fable," and as it has been exten-
sively circulated in this country by members of
the Roman Church, a Cardinal-Archbishop of
THE nag's head FABLE 201
that Church having even sought in print to de-
fend the fable, it seems necessary to give some
full and accurate information about it — and the
more, as our great Maryland lawyer and canonist,
Hugh Davy Evans, found it advisable in his
time not only to write a book to shov\^ its mani-
fold absurdities, but at a subsequent period to
very much enlarge the same.
We have Churchmen among us who dearly
love their Church and who would even if need
be die for her. But when these Churchmen are
asked, not to die for their Church, but intelligent-
ly to defend her, then they hasten to occupy the
seat of the unlearned and their mouths are sealed
in silence. '' Oh, your Church," says some candid
Romanist, " is a very good one in its way, but after
all it is a very new affair in comparison of ours ;
we don't want to hurt your feelings, but really, to
be frank, we don't regard yours as a Church at
all. Don't you remember the Nag's Head inci-
dent ? " Well, it so happens that they don't know
anything about the said fable, but they gather from
the triumphant tone in which reference is made
that the mention of it is so convincing to their
minds that practically there is nothing more to be
said. Our friends of stanch devotion but of slen-
202 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
der knowledge feel that they have the worst of
the argument, and they are grieved, not for them-
selves, but for the Church. They are like a man
who feels that he is not as healthy as he used to
be. He would like to consult Doctor so and so,
but he is afraid that the doctor will pronounce
him in a bad way. Or like a man whose ac-
counts are not satisfactory, he feels that some-
thing is wrong, and he would like to have everj^-
thing examined and set in order, but he dreads to
look into the matter, and so he shuns the exam-
ination. Even so our Churchman fears he will
find a break somewhere cutting him off from
the glorious and Apostolic past, and he is afraid.
What, then, is this terrible " Nag's Head
Fable"? Briefly it is this: In 1604, forty-four
years after Parker's consecration, an exiled Ro-
man priest named Holywood, in a book pub-
lished in Latin at Antwerp, started the story
which bears this title. He pretended that the
consecration of Archbishop Parker was an ir-
regular ceremony performed at '' The Nag's
Head Tavern," which a Chaplain of Bishop
Bonner's witnessed by peeping through a key-
hole in the door.
We are invited to consider this marvellous
THE nag's head FABLE 203
Story as of necessity discrediting Anglican or-
ders. Why, if it were true, what difference
would it make in our Anglican position ? A
tavern is not a fit place certainly for such a re-
ligious ceremony as the consecration of a Bishop.
But there is no place on this earth where a con-
secration rightly performed is not valid and
binding. On the mountain-top or in the recess-
es of the valley, on a glistening iceberg or a
frail raft in mid-ocean, the great commission of
the Episcopate may be laid on a man. Where
did St. Paul consecrate Timothy? Where Ti-
tus ? Surely such an argument as this is not
to be taken seriously. And yet it is this argu-
ment that a Cardinal- Archbishop brings forward
against the validity of Anglican orders.
But the story is manifestly false. To begin
with, Elizabeth was no Puritan. She was both
Anglican and Catholic, and, for her own sake,
she would naturally take care that all should be
rightly done at Parker's consecration. It was
politically a matter of life and death to her that
lovers of the old state of affairs should be satis-
fied. We must not suppose that the nation was
anything but Catholic at heart. Churchmen
might be willing to surrender many things, but
204 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
here at all events there must be no surrender.
The queen knew this, and, whatever her own feel-
ings and desires were, she would have been
utterly powerless to get any diocese in England
to acknowledge as its Archbishop anyone who
had been appointed as the lay officers of State
were appointed or as are elected the moderators
of the Presbyterian Synod. But that there should
be no break, that all should be done in essentials
as had ever been done, was plainly the queen's
own will and desire.
All eyes were upon the queen. There must be
no mistake. Doubtless it was to this very jeal-
ousy for the past methods in essentials that we
owe the unusually careful notes and entries of
various kinds which we have of these events.
Every step, from the selection of Parker to his
consecration, is minutely and accurately de-
scribed. In the Lambeth Register there is given
at length (we quote the very words of the Reg-
ister) "The order of the Rites and ceremonies ob-
served in the Consecration of the most Rev. Lord,
Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, in
the chapel within his Manor of Lambeth, on Suu'
day, the 17th day of December in the year of our
Lord one thousand five hundred and fifty nine."
THE NAG'S HEAD FABLE 205
There we read that into the beautifully adorned
chapel entered early in the morning the Arch-
bishop-elect, vested in scarlet cassock and hood,
preceded by four torches and accompanied by the
four Bishops who were to serve at his consecra-
tion, viz. : William Barlow, Bishop of Bath and
Wells ; John Scory, Bishop of Chichester ; Miles
Coverdale, Bishop of Exeter, and John Hodgkins,
Bishop Suffragan of Bedford. Of these four Bish-
ops, two had been consecrated according to the
Latin form of the old English ordinal in the days
of Henry VIII., and two according to the English
form of the ordinal during the reign of Edward
VI. Will it be believed that the whole entry
in the Register is pretended by Roman writers
to be a forgery, on the sole ground that it is so
very minute and circumstantial ? According to
this theory, then, vagueness, indefiniteness, and
inexactness are marks of truth. A strange conclu-
sion certainly. " It bears," says a writer of that
Church named John Williams, " intrinsic evidence
of being concocted for a purpose. The scribe
thought to himself people will say, ' Oh it must
be true, it is so circumstantial.* But the thing
is overdone — the dish is over-spiced." From
mere partisan splenetic writing of this kind it is
206 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
refreshing to turn to the pages of the eminent
Roman Catholic historian Dr. Lingard, and read
concerning this very entry in the Lambeth Reg-
ister these words : '' One objection was that the
official Register containing a full account of the
consecration was a forgery. But there was noth-
ing to countenance such a supposition. The most
experienced eye could not discover in the entry
itself, or the form of the characters or the color
of the ink, the slightest vestige of imposture.
And if external confirmation were wanting there
was the Archbishop's Diary, and the Zurich let-
ters in which we find Sampson informing Peter
Martyn of the consecration."
In truth this thing was not done in a corner.
Long since has ever}^ Roman Catholic of note
given up the absurd theory of forgery. Even op-
ponents novv^ declare that the entry in the Register
is in the same hand as the entries of Cranmer and
Pole, and that it is attested by the same notaries
pubKc as attested Pole's own record. Lingard
speaks of any denial of this as folly. But there
is a greater name still, a name which stands for
the highest attainments in theological scholar-
ship that this nineteenth century has seen. Dr.
Von Dollinger, himself a Roman till driven out by
THE NAGS HEAD FABLE 20/
the Papal dogma of infallibility, at the Conference
in Bonn in 1875, used these words: "The fact
that Parker was consecrated by four rightly con-
secrated Bishops Avith imposition of hands and
the necessary words is so well attested that if
one chooses to doubt this fact one could with
the same right doubt one hundred thousand facts.
The orders of the Romanist Church could be
doubted with more appearance of reason."
What sad mistakes men make in not keeping
up with the times. The information they possess
is as valuable as a last year's almanac. Their
want of knowledge is really inexcusable in these
days. In colonial days a curious result of thus
being behind the times was not infrequent. It
was then, as it is now, the custom throughout the
colonies of Britain to pray for the sovereign and
the royal family, but sometimes it happened that
news of the sovereign's death did not reach the
distant colony till months after the event. In the
meantime prayers were offered for the dead but
none for the living ruler of the people. The min-
ister was not up to the times, that was all. And
those who would try to discredit Parker's conse-
cration are behind the times, be they Cardinals,
Archbishops, or laymen. They will need to read,
208 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
mark, learn, and inwardly digest not what we
say, but what the men of their own Church say
concerning the unimpeachable character of Par-
ker's consecration.
Now what are we asked to accept as the alter-
native, if for a moment we assume the truth of
their objection ? The Nag's Head Fable.
We remember some years ago the Rector of a
parish in Newfoundland describing a controversy
which he had had in a very pleasant way with
the Roman priest of Ferryland (the place where
the first Lord Baltimore settled for awhile in his
province of Avalon, before he and his family
came down to Virginia). The Roman Catholic
priest at Ferryland had been arguing against the
validity of Anglican orders, but without much
success, until finally he brought up his heaviest
gun and discharged that at the outworks of the
enemy. " What," said he, with the air of a man
who is about to convince with an overwhelming
argument, '' what about the Nag's Head Fable ?
You can't answer that. You can't do away with
the force of the argument from that." " I am
right glad," replied the Rector, " to hear 3^ou call
it a fable. I have always regarded it as such, but
I am pleased to hear that you also so regard it."
THE nag's head FABLE 209
The Roman had not a word to say ; out of his
own mouth he had been convicted. The Nag's
Head Fable is a fable and nothing more. For a
time it served its purpose and helped on the
Roman cause, as the false decretals did in a great-
er and earlier controversy, but, except by our
Roman friends here who are behind the times
and still quote it with approval, we rarely hear
it mentioned.
Under the Atlantic Ocean there lies that won-
derful production of enterprise and science,
stretching over two thousand miles through the
deep sea, the telegraph cable. Let that cable be
all sound and entire except in one particular spot
and the conducting power is lost. Thus it is
with the Episcopate. If one link be missing, the
conducting power of the Episcopacy is lost at
that particular spot. But in all the Anglican
chain they cannot find one missing link, all the
links are perfect. When Matthew Parker was
consecrated, a new star was visibly placed in the
ecclesiastical firmament. He became Archbish-
op of Canterbury with the hopes of a Church
and nation resting upon him. How glorious a
line of predecessors had gone before him in the
chair of Augustine ! But among the sainted
i4
210 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
Archbishops, the Anselms and Thomases and Ed-
munds, there is none worthy of greater honor
than the unsainted Archbishop Parker. Great
and glorious were his services to the cause of
truth, and if we may speak, as we surely may, of
Elizabeth as a providential queen, we may not less
certainly proclaim Matthew Parker as a provi-
dential Archbishop at the time when the whole
Anglican Episcopate was narrowed down as it
were to the slender dimensions of an isthmus be-
tween two broad and spreading continents.
There is that in the English Church organi-
zation which gives us good ground to hope that
to her will be granted at the last the blessing of
the peacemakers. Let us hope so, praying and
working meanwhile ; and for this purpose no
prayer could be so fitting as the prayer of the
man of blameless life and great learning, Mat-
thew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury : ** The
Lord defend His Church and govern it with His
Holy Spirit, and bless the same with all pros-
perous felicity. Amen."
XIII.
SHAKESPEARE A SON OF THE REFOR
MATION
XIII.
SHAKESPEARE A SON OF THE REFOR-
MATION
" What is man, that thou art mindful of him : and the son of
man, that thou visitest him ? Thou madest him lower than the
angels : to crown him with glory and worship." — Psalms viii.
4-5.
"Students of biography," observed Professor
Drummond in his chapter on environment, " will
observe that in all well-written lives attention is
concentrated for the first few chapters upon two
points. We are introduced first to the family to
which the subject of the memoir belongs, and
then we are invited to consider more external in-
fluences. Schools and schoolmasters, neighbors,
home, pecuniary circumstances, scenery, and by
and by the religious and political atmosphere of
the time. And these two forces," he tells us,
*' known as heredity and environment are the
master influences of the organic world."
We all doubtless agree with the words of the
214 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
distinguished author of " Natural Law in the
Spiritual World," for we have seen proof of them
again and again and we know them to be true.
The Napoleon Bonapartes, the George Washing-
tons, the Charles Spurgeons, even the Uncle
Toms and the Uriah Heeps of our day are what
heredity and environment have made them.
Bishops, cardinals, judges, generals, merchants,
lawyers, bakers, tailors, saloon-keepers, publi-
cans and sinners, the saints and the elect, all
sorts and conditions of men are oftentimes what
they are because of their training and surround-
ings. Place, for example, Spurgeon in Italy, let
him be born and educated in the faith of the
Italian Church, and his career as a Baptist
preacher will be a sheer impossibility. But he
might become, with his silvery voice and mar-
vellous powers of organization, the Bishop of
Rome himself and the inspirer of the policy of
the Holy Roman Church.
What we are is, indeed, all very much a matter
ot what our fathers were, and what our own sur-
roundings are or have been. When, therefore,
the Psalmist asks : What is man, that God is
mindful of him? and the son of man, that He
visits him? may we not ourselves answer and
SHAKESPEARE A SON OF THE REFORMATION 215
say : '' Man is a creature of circumstances, the
child of the past, the sport of the present, and
the plaything of powers which seem to rob him
of all individuality and of all independence, and
make him, even as the Psalmist himself tells us, a
thing of naught, whose time passeth away as a
shadow."
And yet another answer may be given, an an-
swer which we owe to Shakespeare, first of poets
and greatest son of the Anglo-Saxon race. To
him man is a piece of wonderful workmanship —
" We are such stuff as dreams are made of." Hu-
manity in his sight was not far from Divinity.
As he penetrated deeper and deeper into the re-
cesses of the soul, he saw how great and wonder-
ful a being man is. He cries out in " Hamlet: "
" How noble he is in reason, how infinite in facul-
ty ; in form and moving how express and admi-
rable ; in action how like an angel ; in appearance
how like a god, the beauty of the world." The
voice is Hamlet's, but the words are the words
of Shakespeare.
We grant all this too. We rejoice in it. But
we still maintain that man is largely formed by
the forces that surround him, and even Shake-
speare himself is no exception to the rule. Mani-
2l6 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
festly was he influenced by his environment. We
speak, indeed, of that now, understanding by the
term not the whole but only a part of the idea,
not thinking of schools or school companions, nor
yet of his home or the scenery of the Warwick-
shire lanes, but only of the religious and political
atmosphere of the time. He was the product of
the sixteenth century, the outcome of the search-
ing after truth which marked his age, the offspring
of the spirit of religious liberty, the most gifted
son of the Anglican Reformation, born of its
spirit and nurtured under its influences.
Had Shakespeare lived one century earlier or
one century later, he could not have been what
he was. There were forces at work in his day
which at an earlier period had not come into ex-
istence, and at a later had spent themselves, and
those forces gave us Shakespeare as we know
him. And what a glorious gift he was ! He was
of the Elizabethan age and of that only. He
stood at the meeting-point of two great epochs
in our history. Just when the usurped domin-
ion of the Papal court over the national Church
was waning forever in England, and before that
Church had been called to see the unlovely flower
of Puritanism blossoming in her vineyard, Shake-
SHAKESPEARE A SON OF THE REFORMATION 21/
speare was sent to catch the inspiration of the mo-
ment and in immortal verse give proof that the
doctrines and practice of the Anglican Church are
the happy mean between the two extremes into
which religious men have fallen.
And he does this in that spirit of toleration and
kindly sympathy and consideration for the views
of others with which we are familiar as a trait of
Anglican Churchmen. He illustrated, indeed, in
his own life the avoidance of extremes. He was
no violent partisan, though he lived in troublous
times. He was no scorner of other men's creeds.
He saw good everywhere and in everything. He
shared that larger hope
" That nothing walks with aimless feet,
That not one life shall be destroy 'd
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete."
Of this no better proof can there be than that some
even regard him as a favorer of Papal supremacy,
while others again conceive of him as caring for
none of those things, claiming that he was wholly
indifferent to the distinctions of religious belief.
It is not so. It is not so. He knew whom he
had believed, but life was too full of mystery for
2l8 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
him to condemn others when they had fallen with
the weight of cares
" Upon the world's great altar-stairs
That slope through darkness up to God."
Shakespeare, we say, lived in troublous times.
Yet the country was united as one man. His
countrymen were patriots first, whatever they
miofht be afterwards. Elizabeth was the centre
of national aspirations and of national hopes.
One of the first sights to greet him in the streets
of London, when he came to live in the great me-
tropolis, was the marching of men to Tilbury
Docks to join the fleets against the Spaniard.
There was need of patriotism. There was need
that men move as a unit. As Innocent III. in the
reign of King John had asserted his right to de-
pose the English sovereign, and release English-
men from the bond of allegiance, so another
Pope — Sixtus V". — was now claiming that power
and right. History was repeating itself. The
Church and nation had come to the verge of an-
other period, when a voice should declare again
those words that should never die : " The Eng-
lish Church shall be free and hold her rights en-
tire and her liberties inviolate." For the Armada
SHAKESPEARE A SON OF THE REFORMATION 219
was a religious crusade. It was the army of a
Church going to make war upon another Church,
forgetful of Christ's warning : " They that take the
sword shall perish with the sword " : " If my king-
dom were of this world, then would my servants
fight: but now is my kingdom not from hence."
In these times of doubt and trouble, of anxiety
and perplexity, Shakespeare sends forth his con-
tribution to the cause of England's Church. He
sounds the trumpet of battle, and he gives no un-
certain sound. He comes as a second Stephen
Langton, and what can he do better than send
men back in thought to that earlier time when
their liberty — the liberty wherewith Christ had
made them free — was in jeopardy ? In his play
of '' King John " we hear the voice of a true son of
the national Church. In that play he depicts the
ambition, the faithlessness, the sophistr}^ of the
Court of Rome. When Philip of France, hearing
John's reply to Pandulph, exclaims, '' Brother of
England, you blaspheme in this : " hear his reply,
*' Though you and all the kings of Christendom
Are led so grossly by this meddling priest,
Dreading the curse that money may buy out,
And by the merit of vile gold, dross, dust.
Purchase corrupted pardon of a man
220 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
Who in that sale sells pardon from himself,
Though you and all the rest so grossly led
This juggling witchcraft with revenue cherish,
Yet I, alone, alone do me oppose
Against the Pope, and count his friends my foes."
Yet even here, in this very place, we mark his
kindly spirit : for in his *' King John " Shakespeare
had followed an old play in two parts, at the end
of which there was a ribald scene in which the
licentiousness of the monks was exposed to ridi-
cule. But this scene he wholly omits. If we re-
member that this play was written when excite-
ment was still high, and at a time when most if
not all of the monasteries had been destroyed on
the very ground — a Roman Cardinal being the
judge — that the salt had lost its savor and was
therefore good for nothing but to be cast out and
trodden under foot of men, his silence becomes
most noteworthy. We may be sure that to hold
up to hatred, ridicule, and contempt as untrue to
their vows the members of religious orders, would
have been highly popular. But there is a noble
absence of anything of this kind. Shakespeare is
never guilty of playing to the gallery. For a
passing popularity, for which some men seem will-
ing to barter their souls, he never swerves a hair's-
SHAKESPEARE A SON OF THE REFORMATION 221
breadth from the path he had marked out as right.
It is in his treatment of religion and religious per-
sons that Shakespeare is seen to be so immeasu-
rably superior to all others. In this respect what
a charm separates him from our greatest writers
since his day ! We read Dickens or Thackeray,
Walter Scott or George Eliot, and there is the
same fault in all, an ungenerous treatment if not
of religion at least of those who represent it.
Think of such whom you find in their pages, and
you can barely call to mind one whom you would
wish to have as a pastor. The Chadbands of
Dickens or the Charles Honeymans of Thacke-
ray, what contemptible creatures they are ! Even
when no evil thing is said of them they are
spoken of slightingly, as if they were the legiti-
mate targets for the arrows of ridicule and amuse-
ment:
" Hear how he clears the point o' faith
Wi' rattlin' an' thumpin' !
Now meekly cahn, now wild in wrath,
He's stampin' an' he's jumpin' ! "
There is nothing of this in Shakespeare. He has
no shafts of ridicule for those who, however un-
worthily, represented religion. Over their sins
222 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
and failings he throws the veil of that divine
charity which both hopeth all things and be-
lieveth all things. The world had, indeed, in-
volved them all in one common ruin. Their day
was past and gone. They had fallen into con-
demnation. But nobly does the great poet take
his stand. He will not throw water on the
drowned rat. He will not join in the hue and
cry. To condemn the righteous with the wicked
is not in his nature, and it finds no expression in
his life. For the sake of their profession he will
speak generously of all, remembering that to
their own Master they must stand or fall. It is
thus he ever speaks : '' Forbear to judge, for we
are sinners all."
Again, Shakespeare does not, like Byron, pol-
lute the altar of genius with strange fire. He is
ever practically saying : " He that will love life,
and see good days, let him refrain his tongue
from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile :
Let him eschew evil, and do good ; let him seek
peace, and ensue it." Tell me not that Shake-
speare did not love innocency, had not the loftiest
of standards. Is there a play that he has written
that makes man the worse for reading it? Is
there a character he has painted from which we
SHAKESPEARE A SON OF THE REFORMATION 223
draw an inspiration to do evil ? He has shown
men the danger, as he only can, of giving way
to temptation and strengthening themselves in
wickedness. What a reality to him was the devil,
and how has he portrayed his crafts and assaults,
his wiles, devices and disguises, for the warning
of the unwary and unstable :
" Mark you this, Bassanio, the devil can cite
Scripture for his purpose."
Shakespeare preached from no church pulpit.
In the ordinary sense of the word he never
preached a sermon in his life, yet he did preach.
The stage of the Globe Theatre was his pulpit,
and the audience that gathered before him his
congregation. But what congregations has he
had since ! Was there ever a preacher more uni-
versally heard or read ? What tens of millions
has he taught that what a man soweth, that shall
he also reap ! See how he makes this terrible
truth so plain that none can be ignorant of it.
What a weird and awful scene is that when, on
the eve of the battle of Bosworth Hill, one after
another of the spirits of those whom he had
slain comes to Richard III. and bids him despair
and die. Prince Edward, King Henry, Clarence,
224 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
his own Queen Anne, and last of all Bucking*
ham,
" The first that helped him to the crown,
The last to feel his tyranny."
And then see in the tent of Richmond, his oppo^
nent, one who can say :
" For remember this,
God and our good cause fight upon our side,
The prayers of holy saints and wronged souls.
Like high-reared bulwarks, stand before our face."
But all the while the guilty king is in agony of
fear as he hears that fearful word from each :
" Despair and die ! "
So it was with the dying Beaufort, Bishop of
Winchester and a Roman Cardinal, who had mur-
dered Gloster. As his own death drew near, he
could think of nothing else but the murder he had
done, muttering, incoherently : " Oh, torture me
no more ! I will confess." Well might the good
king, standing by such a death-bed, pray :
*' O thou Eternal Mover of the heavens,
Look with a gentle eye upon this wretch,
Oh, beat away the busy meddling fiend
That lays strong siege unto this wretched one.
And from his bosom purge this black despair."
SHAKESPEARE A SON OF THE REFORMATION 225
But in nothing is Shakespeare more truly a son
of the Reformation than in his love of the Script-
ures and his constant use of them in daily life.
The Reformation brought out of its obscurity the
word of God, and restored it to its rightful place
of honor. Men now began to ask, " What saith the
Lord ? " and, like the noble Bereans, they searched
the Scriptures daily for the Lord's answer.
But what a diligent student of that new learn-
ing was Shakespeare ! No writer in these days
of multiplied Bibles has ever shown a greater
knowledge. He seemed to know it all from Gen-
esis to Revelation. There are said to be no less
than five hundred and fifty biblical quotations, al-
lusions, references, and sentiments in his works,
** Hamlet " alone contains about eighty, " Richard
HL" nearly fifty, and '' Henry V." and ''Richard
n." about forty each. He quotes from fifty-four
of the books of the Bible, and not one of his thirty-
seven plays is without a scriptural reference.
Here it is that he is most clearly seen to be
imbued with the spirit of our Church ; that spirit
which finds expression in her declaration that
'' Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary
for salvation ; so that whatsoever is not read there-
in, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required
15
226 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
of any man, that it should be believed as an article
of the Faith." It is in this wide knowledge of
Scripture that we find on the one hand, the secret
of Shakespeare's freedom from all medisevai error
and superstitions ; and on the other, his clear
grasp of the great central truths of Christianity.
How beautifully has he set forth one of these
great truths — the scheme of our redemption :
" Why, all the souls that were, were forfeit once,
And He that might the vantage best have took
Found out the remedy."
Truly this man of marvellous powers, with his
deep insight into scriptural truth, his mighty
charity, his zeal for the right, was made a little
lower than the angels, and has been crowned with
glory and worship. Of him we say, as he spake
in " Julius Cassar : "
*' His life was gentle : and the elements
So mixed in him, that nature might stand up
And say to all the world. This was a man."
How the true gospel spirit shines out in that
last supreme moment just before his death, when
first of all and before all, dictating his last will
and testament, he said that he commended his
SHAKESPEARE A SON OF THE REFORMATION 22/
soul to God his Creator, and thus (these are his
exact words) " hoping and assuredly believing
through the only merits of Jesus Christ, my
Saviour, to be made partaker of life everlasting."
" We called," said Carlyle, '' Dante the melodious
priest of Middle- Age Catholicism."
We thank God that in him we behold one of
whom this may be truly said. But the melodi-
ous priest of a true Catholicism without supersti-
tion, intolerance or fanatical fierceness, is William
Shakespeare — son of the Anglican Reformation in
the sixteenth century.
XIV.
PURITANISM
XIV.
PURITANISM
" The kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast
into the sea, and gathered of every kind." — St. Matthew
xiii. 47.
Off the western coast of southern Italy, be-
tween the mainland and the island of Sicily, lie
Scylla and Charybdis, the rock and the whirlpool
of ancient myth and legend. There the mariners
of the Old World most dreaded the perils of the
deep. There they most fervently prayed their
gods for protection against the double danger of
being wrecked upon the one, whilst trying to
avoid the other. Hence the proverb : '' Between
Scylla and Charybdis."
Now in the sixteenth century, the national
Church of England was as a ship making the dan-
gerous passage between Romanism and Puritan-
ism. The good ship was sailing between the rag-
ing waves of foreign interference on the one hand,
and the bare rocks of unhistorical innovations on
232 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
the other. Not entirely unscathed, however, did
she pass by the Roman whirlpool. Her pilot,
Thomas Cranmer, was overwhelmed by its fury
and deprived of his life ; a hostile pilot seized her
wheel by force and put many of her faithful sail-
ors to death. In a short while, however, her crew
rallied, and under a pilot of her own choosing —
the skilful Archbishop, Matthew Parker — she
passed out into the calmer waters beyond, bearing
high upon her mainmast a banner inscribed with
the words : " No Italian priest shall tithe or toll
in these our dominions."
It is now for us to see how she escaped the
cragged rock of Puritanism. Never since apos-
tolic men had preached the Gospel in Britain, had
the Church known more perilous times ; barely
was she saved from complete destruction. The
spirit of evil had taken possession of her foes, and
made them relentless and cruel. Against her
they stood up and raged together ; against her
they imagined a vain thing, and for a time it
seemed as if their cause would triumph. Yet she
was able to exclaim in her hour of uttermost
need : '' Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy,
for when I fall I shall rise again." The night was
dark and stormy and full of danger, but at last
PURITANISM 233
she sailed by the perilous rock and found herself
again in calmer waters, yet
" With torn sails, provisions short,
And only not a wreck."
Coming back from the region of metaphor to
that of plain fact, we may say that ere the nation-
al Church had had time to congratulate herself
upon her safe deliverance from the power of the
Papacy, ere the Te Deums had ceased to roll
through the choirs of her cathedrals, or the fires of
rejoicings had died down on the tops of the hills,
this new danger was seen close at hand. It is
ever a tendency of the human mind to go from
one extreme to the other; and so men rushed
from mediasvalism, from the acceptance of gross
superstitions, and from an uncatholic method of
church government, to the wildest rejection of
apostolic truth and order. Inspired by a bitter
remembrance of wrong done, they hated with
a blind unreasoning hatred everything which
seemed to savor of Rome's teaching. Sponsors
and the sign of the cross in baptism, music and
organs, the ring in the marriage service, and
kneeling at the reception of the blessed Sacra-
ment— all were anathem.atized. Even the inno-
234 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
cent and comely surplice was bitterly spoken
against as the idolatrous gear of the Papists, and
as a vestment of Baal.
As the ball which the school-boy rolls along
over the freshly fallen snow silently gathers in
size and weight, until it becomes too large to be
controlled any longer, so it was with the strange
misapprehensions of Puritanism. It is probable
that the earlier Puritans would have stood aghast
at the excesses of the later ; but it was they who
had evoked the Frankenstein. Beginning with
objections against small matters of ritual and cer-
emony, the Puritans went on until they had abol-
ished both Prayer Book and Episcopacy ; had
wrought havoc in the desecrated churches of their
ancestors ; had persecuted the faithful with the
sword ; had brought the Archbishop of Canter-
bury to the scaffold ; had dismembered the king-
dom and beheaded the king ; had overthrown both
the Constitution and the national Church, and had
desecrated the graves* of those long since dead.
Yet they termed themselves the congregation of
the Lord. It could not be otherwise. An unhol}^
Puritan was a contradiction in terms. The Puri-
tan was already a member of the aristocracy of
heaven. " He walked with God " like Enoch.
PURITANISM 235
Puritanism had no sinners, no chaff amongst its
wheat; this was the difference between Puritans
and other men.
" All piety consists therein
In them, in other men all sin."
This unhappy result was not due to the excesses
of a few erring individuals, but to the logical
working out of the system ; the principles of the
true Puritan made him necessarily intolerant; he
was right and all other men were wrong, and it
was his solemn duty to bring them to the truth.
His method has well been described in '' Hudi-
bras : "
" For he was of that stubborn crew
Of errant saints whom all men grant
To be the true Church militant :
Such as do build their faith upon
The holy text of pike and gun,
Decide all controversy by
Infallible artillery :
And prove their doctrine orthodox
By apostolic blows and knocks ;
Call fire and sword and desolation
A godly thorough Reformation."
This is no parody : the founders of Puritanism
and its best men gloried in the principle here laid
down. They made the persecution of others a
236 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
part of their creed; Mohammed offered the alter^
native of the Koran or the sword. They offered
a similar choice. " I deny," wrote Cartwright
(whom Neale, the Puritan historian, calls the
'' Father of the Puritans "), " that upon reforma-
tion there ought to follow any pardon of death.
Heretics ought to be put to death now." It must
be admitted they were consistent in their after-
dealings with so-called heretics, and in no way de-
parted from the teaching of their chief apostles.
Ah, when will men be wise? When will they learn
from the mistakes of the past ? When will they
have sanctified common-sense, and be true to the
teaching of the Scriptures which they acknowl-
edge as their guide ? When, indeed, did persecu-
tion help any cause ? The Romanist tried it and
failed. " Look to the Netherlands," exclaims Pole
to Gardiner in the midst of Mary's persecution :
" Look to the Netherlands, wherein have been
Such holocausts of heresy — to what end ?
For yet the faith is not established there.
Garditier. The end's not come.
Pole. No, nor this way will come,
Seeing there lie two ways to every end —
A better and a worse — the worse is here
To persecute, because to persecute
Makes a faith more hated."
PURITANISM 237
Now what is this Puritanism which makes such
lofty claims, and enshrines intolerance as an arti-
cle of its creed ? We first meet with it by name
in 1564, but the thing itself is as old as religion.
The Pharisees were the earlier Puritans ; they
thanked God they were not as other men were.
The Puritans were ever doing the same. Crom-
well's Puritan soldiers were the saints who looked
upon themselves as God's chosen instruments for
the punishment of evil-doers, and for the praise
of them that do well. They were not sinners as
other men. They were children of the light :
other men dwelt in darkness. The Church, in
their view, was a congregation of faithful men
into which nothing entered that defiled or worked
abomination or made a lie ; their ideal was lofty,
but it was. not scriptural. Christ spoke of a very
different Church. His Church was " like unto a
net, that was cast into the sea, and gathered of
every kind." '' Puritanism," says Carlyle, '' is the
faith that became Scotland's, New England's,
Oliver Cromwell's," and he tells us that historv
will have something to say about this for some
time to come. Probably it will, but we trust that
its record in the future will be more lovely than
it has been in the past, or history may shed tears
238 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
and weep because of it, and wish her task were
given to another. Never had a system of relig-
ion better opportunity to establish itself in men's
hearts. In Old England and in New Eng-
land it has been tried in a field where it had no
rival ; in both countries it once for a time held
the sceptre of absolute dominion. What, then,
may we ask, have been the fruits of Puritanism ?
It is after all by the fruits that we must judge of
any religious system. " Wherefore," saith Christ,
** by their fruits ye shall know them."
All through the reign of Elizabeth the Puritans
were growing in numbers, in power, and in influ-
ence, within the national Church, but they were
not of her. Their model was Geneva, and their pa-
tron saint was John Calvin. Their ambition was
to see the time when no child would be signed in
baptism with the sign of the cross, and no min-
ister ever wear a surplice ; when every memory
of the past would be forgotten, every sign of
that past obliterated, and every Catholic usage
abolished ; when, in fact, the old Church should
be no more and the Puritans alone be masters in
the land.
Their ambition was for a time gratified. They
saw the national Church overthrown, its minis-
PURITANISM 239
ters proscribed, and themselves masters of both
Church and State. And one of the first acts by
which they heralded their accession to power was
to charge the Archbishop of Canterbury with
treason, and send him a prisoner to the Tower.
On the evening of the day he was arrested he
wrote these words in his diary : " I stayed at Lam-
beth till the evening to avoid the gaze of the peo-
ple. I went to evening prayers in my chapel.
The Psalms of the day and chapter fifty of Isaiah
gave me great comfort. God make me worthy
of it and fit to receive it. As I went to my barge
hundreds of my poor neighbors stood there and
prayed for my safety and return to my house, for
which I bless God and them."
Four years later he was brought to trial, when
even his enemies acknowledged that they could
find no just occasion against him to put him to
death ; yet he must not live —
" Prejudged by foes determined not to spare,
An old weak man for vengeance thrown aside."
Happily he had no ground, like Wolsey, to re-
proach himself with neglect of duty ; for with
single-mindedness and unity of purpose he had
served his God well ; he was the one man of that
240 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
day who saw clearly the true Catholic position of
our Church.
On Tower Hill, in the seventy-third year of his
age, in 1645, he was beheaded — the second Arch-
bishop of Canterbury to be unjustly executed as
a common felon in the course of one century.
Our debt to him is enormous. We cannot all
see it now, but in the strong words of Professor
Mozley : " he had saved the English Church."
" The good shepherd giveth his life for the
sheep."
But the end had not been reached. The men
who had struck down an Archbishop sought a
king next — a king whose principles were the same
as those of the martyred archbishop. The fore-
gone conclusion was soon reached ; amid popular
excitement, with the air resounding with cries of
''Justice, justice!" Charles the First passed to
his doom, and the whole kingdom was convulsed
for twelve years.
And then began the reign of the saints. To this
very day the cathedrals and parish churches in
England bear silent witness to the character of
that rule, for those churches were treated as if
they had been temples of Baal ; the Puritans
broke down all the carved work thereof with axes
PURITANISM 241
and hammers and defiled the dwelling-place of
God's name even unto the ground. Over eight
thousand clergymen, most of them with Avives
and children, were deprived of their means of
support and many died of want. The use of the
Prayer Book in public or private was rigorous-
ly forbidden, and it was made a crime for even
a child to read by the bedside of a sick parent
one of those beautiful collects which the whole
world now justly admires. Even Macaulay, who
tells us this, seems not to have wholly loved the
Puritans. " They objected to bull-baiting," he
says, " but it was not so much for the pain it gave
the bulls as for the pleasure it gave the specta-
tors." Do you v/onder that the very name of
Puritan is now looked for in vain among our
sects and denominations ? Who are the Puri-
tans to-day ? In Elizabeth's day they were Pres-
byterians ; in Cromwell's day they were Indepen-
dents. But who are they now? We hear of
no Puritan Church among all the churches with
which we are afflicted. Is it because its record
has not been one of unstained beauty and love-
liness ?
But Puritanism crossed the Atlantic and plant-
ed itself on our New England coast, in search, we
16
242 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
are told, of religious liberty. It has been beauti-
fully sung
" Ay, call it holy ground,
The soil where first they trod ;
They have left unstained what there they found,
Freedom to worship God : "
But this is the dreaming of poetry.
In the Puritan colony one knew exactly his
duty and what he could not do. He might not
run or even walk on the Sabbath day, except rev-
erently to the meeting. Mothers were advised
not to kiss their children on the Sabbath day, and
absence from public worship was followed by fine
and whipping. The rulers of the congregations,
true to their Jewish anti-types, were thus mak-
ing the commandments of God of none effect
by their traditions, laying heavy burdens upon
men's shoulders, and teaching for doctrines the
commandments of men.
Yet their intentions were good. They meant
to have founded a perfect church, an earthly king-
dom of the saints ; that they were disappointed
was not their fault. They failed as all men fail
who attempt the impossible, but meanwhile we
cannot say that Puritanism, like charity, hopeth all
things, endureth all things, believeth all things.
PURITANISM 243
Puritanism lives still ; and so long as human
nature remains what it is, it will live. But as a
system it has largely passed away.
The good that its leaders did for the political
enfranchisement of men remains as their best and
enduring monument.
There are still sects that put a ban on innocent
pleasure and seem to be at war with God's sun-
shine and all that makes glad the heart of man ;
in them the solemn and gloomy Puritan temper
seems still to live. But can we marvel that our
people have become weary of a system of religion
which makes them think of their Heavenly Fa-
ther far otherwise than as their living Father and
God?
Oh, how infinitely better, more natural, and
more helpful is it to rejoice in the glorious broth-
erhood of the Son of man, who came eating and
drinking and entering into all our social joys and
pleasures, than to live under the cold, chilling
effect of Puritanism, as if we were wrapped round
about with the grave-clothes of the dead ! Let us
up and be doing, not thinking ourselves better
than others, not thinking life itself a burden, but
thinking of it as an inestimable blessing and a
noble opportunity, in w^hich we can ourselves
244 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
make sure of an eternal inheritance and help on
our neighbors in the same heavenly road we are
ourselves travelling. Yet if the clergy of our
Church are respected to-day for their office's sake,
let them cheerfully acknowledge that for this
they are largely indebted to Puritanism. It was
indeed Puritanism's great gift to the Christian
Church. There was, however, a second gift : the
essence of Puritanism is the sense of individual
responsibility. Individualism is just now at a
discount. Men see so clearly the selfishness
which readily attaches to it, that they are in peril
of denying its immense truth and importance.
To go about doing good is a realization of the
brotherhood of man, and is a side of religion im-
mensely popular just now. But, on the other
hand, it must never be forgotten that man stands
alone before God, alone ivith God, as though
there were no other created being in the uni-
verse ; and that in the development of each man's
own character in accordance with the Divine
laws, lies his primary and lasting obligation.
XV.
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND IN OUR
TIMES
XV.
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND IN OUR
TIMES
" Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of
life." — Rev. ii. ii.
Our present subject may well kindle with en-
thusiasm the spirit of every Churchman, for we
speak of the work accomplished by our beloved
Church during the last half century in England.
Triumphing over obstacles that seemed well-nigh
insurmountable, " the little one has become a thou-
sand, and a small one a strong nation." So that
of her we can truthfully sing: "Like a mighty
army moves the Church of God."
But many and grievous were the dangers that
had threatened her. There was a time when she
could say with St. Paul that she was " in perils of
robbers, in perils of her own countrymen, in per-
ils in the city, in perils among false brethren."
But those dangers were for the most part past.
Others indeed of a different kind were coming
248 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
upon her, for she had become prosperous. She
had succeeded in her mission. She had nobly
won her cause. She had shown her Catholicity.
She had made good her claims to a divine origin.
'' Fortune and victory sat on her helm." And in
consequence, the temptations which overthrew
the prosperous church of Laodicea were assailing
her. She too might say that she was increased
in goods and had grown rich, rich in men's affec-
tions and rich in good deeds. It remained, there-
fore, for her to take warning from the fate of
the Laodicean Church, lest she failed of the
crown of life. Meanwhile the Apocalyptic com-
mendation of the chief of the churches of Asia
Minor could be bestowed upon her : " I know
thy works, and thy labor, and thy patience, and
how thou canst not bear them which are evil ;
and thou hast tried them which say they are
apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars :
and hast borne, and hast patience, and for my
name's sake hast labored, and hast not fainted."
But if we go back to the beginning of this cen-
tury, there were no signs of this later growth and
this later success. Then was the winter of her
existence. Hard frozen were the arteries and
veins of her spiritual life. She seemed wrapped
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND IN OUR TIMES 249
in the cold, icy, embrace of death. Many indeed
were asking whether she would ever live again,
whether life still really dwelt in that motionless
body.
At the building of the second Temple of the
Jewish Church, many of the priests and Levites
and chief of the fathers who were ancient men
wept with a loud voice when they remembered the
glory of the former house, and contrasted it with
what they then saw. And there must have been
many in the English Church who were read}- to
weep in like manner as they saw the condition of
their spiritual Mother. That condition was truly
appalling. The clergy as a class had no concep-
tion of the dignity of their office. Some of them,
Dean Church tells us in his story of the Oxford
movement, 1833-45, were highly cultivated, be-
nevolent men, whose lives were governed by an
unfaltering piety. But there Avere members of
the clerical order who were mere hunters after
preferment. Probably on the whole the clergy
were kind and helpful and sociable, like Gold-
smith's Vicar of Wakefield, but full of zeal for the
Church they were not. At the country dinners
they would say some pleasant things about the
Church, when they responded to the usual toast
250 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
of Church and State, and they would wish her all
prosperity as they honored the toast in cham-
pagne or madeira. But there the matter ended.
The parish churches were fast falling into ruin.
Dirt and damp reigned supreme. The sparrow
had in very truth found her a house, and the
swallow a nest where she could lay her young,
even the altars of the Lord of Hosts, our King
and our God, and through the broken windows
they came and went unhindered. The grave-
yards were little better than the village common.
Services were held on Sundays, but they were
poor, dull, lifeless affairs, and they harmonized
well with the unkept graveyard and the neglected
church. It was all of a piece — churches and ser-
vices, clergy and congregations, they were all
alike in this, that they seemed drawing to an end.
The hand of death was upon them all.
When the century opened, it wanted apparent-
ly but a few years and the National Church
would be as extinct as the dodo, and the sons of
that Church, like the mound-builders of Ohio, a
vanished race. " The Church, as it now stands,"
wrote Arnold, one of the Oxford scholars in 1832,
" no human power can save." " The Church,"
wrote Whately, afterwards Archbishop of Dub-
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND IN OUR TIMES 25 1
lin, '' has been for one hundred years without a
government, and in such a stormy season it will
not go on much longer without a rudder." " If
I thought that we could stand ten or fifteen years
as we are, I should have little fear," wrote Hugh
James Rose.
And had it come to this ? Was the mother of
mighty children, the spiritual mother of Hooker
and Wilson, of Andrews, Jeremy Taylor, and
Ken, of Laud and Parker, of Hugh of Lincoln
and William of Wykeham, of St. Chad of Lich-
field and St. Aidan of Lindisfarne, thus to die?
She that alone of all the churches of the West
had fought successfully her battle for indepen-
dence against the full noontide power of the pa-
pal court ; she that had cared not for the spir-
itual thunders of Hildebrand or of Innocent III.,
and had successfully turned the carnal weap-
ons of Sixtus V. against himself ; she that had
refused at the bidding of the Puritans to fling
away her Catholic heritage, and had suffered in
consequence as she and hers had never done
since the days of Diocletian — had she at last
come to the end of her career, and was she now
to lie down and die ? God forbid. " At evening
time it shall be light." False friends and open
253 LEClURliS ON CHURCH HISTORY
foes had brought her very low. Persecuted she
had been, but not forsaken ; cast down, but not
destroyed. She had clung to her apostolic heri-
tage. She had preserved her charter. She had
kept the faith. She had been faithful unto death.
Notwithstanding all she had suffered, she was
sacramental still ; she was sacerdotal still ; she
was Episcopal still ; she was Catholic still. And
because she had been faithful, God, even our own
God, had given her His blessing. It was when
the Church was weakest there came from God
that force known as the Oxford movement, or
the Catholic revival. We say from God. Re-
membering what that movement was, we dare
not say less than this. '* The wind bloweth
where it listeth, and thou canst not tell whence it
cometh or whither it goeth ; so is every one that
is born of the Spirit." So was it with the Oxford
movement. Good men had been looking out
over the wide field of the English Church's past;
and as they looked their spirits burned within
them, for they felt that the old Church deserved a
better fate than that which threatened her, and
the Spirit bade them speak, and preach, and write,
and teach that the old Church should not die but
live and declare the works of the Lord. Dilapi-
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND IN OUR TIMES 253
dated buildings there might be, careless cler-
gy, lukewarm congregations there might be, nay
worse, unfaithful sons proposing that the Church
should unite with the sects, on the sects' own
ground ; but given ten or fifteen years the}^
would not despair of the old Church. It would
yet bear fruit in its old age.
Those were the days when Churchmen had
come to take their knowledge of their own his-
tory, and to receive their doctrines and ceremo-
nies of relisfion from their enemies. Because Puri-
tans discarded the surplice and the Prayer Book,
and spoke of them contemptuously as relics of
Baalism, they were ready to discard both Praver
Book and surplice. Because the lawyers and pol-
iticians spoke of the Church as " the Establish-
ment," and the Evangelicals- regarded it as an
invisible and mystical body. Nonconformists as
an aggregate of separate congregations, the Eras-
tians as a Parliamentary creature of the Refor-
mation, and the Roman Catholics as a legalized
schism, they were ready to believe one and all of
them, and to teach their children the same.
At such a time, then, the leaders of the Catholic
revival appeared, and their teaching was unmis-
takablv clear : the Church of Ensfland was tlie
254 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
one historic, uninterrupted Church, than which
historically there could be no other locally in
England. They pointed men to the creed which
bade them sa}^ '' I believe in the Holy Catholic
Church," and the movement began. And equal-
ly plainly did they speak of what that Church
taught. Calvinism was no scriptural doctrine,
but only a monstrous perversion of it. Nor was
the law of her ritual to be found enshrined in
Puritan sentiment or in Anglican neglect, but
in the Church's own Book of Common Prayer,
at once her book of devotion and her code of
laws.
Between such teaching as this and what the
Churchmen of that day had previously heard,
there was a vast interval. But it took time to be
widely spread. At first the Bishop in his palace
heard of it, and feared that it would lead the
Church into trouble; or the country Rector talked
it over with the squire and they both liked it not.
But the day soon came when it was the one sub-
ject of conversation all through the land, and for
a time it seemed as if it had turned the world up-
side down. We who are living in the midst of
this movement, who have felt its power and have
been carried forward by it, have perhaps not
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND IN OUR TIMES 255
been able to accurately gauge its full importance
as a religious force. Yet there never has been a
religious movement that exercised greater influ-
ence. Some day it will undoubtedly come to be
recognized as one of the most important of all
forces which have dominated this nineteenth cen-
tury.
Yet such teaching could not but produce ex-
citement in an age ignorant of the history and
doctrines of the Church of England. The storm
did come, and it threatened to sweep all before it.
Terms of reproach were flung broadcast, neither
learning, nor piety, nor aught else being a pro-
tection. A strange excess of exciteraent held pos-
session of men and deprived them of their rea-
son and judgment. The leaders of the movement
that had for its object the welfare of the Church
were called in turn Puseyites, children of the
mist, veiled prophets, Oxford heretics, Jesuits in
disguise, agents of Satan, snakes in the grass,
and other such names. Some idea of the fren-
zy which had seized men may be had from the
treatment meted out to the beautiful " Christian
Year" of John Keble. Before the "Christian
Year " was published, the friends of Keble en-
deavored to dissuade him from giving it to the
256 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
world, on the ground that he would be mistaken
for a Methodist ! But it was published, and, won-
derful to tell, it was publicly burned at Oxford as
the work of one of these Jesuits in disguise, one
of these snakes in the grass who polluted the
sacred edifice of the Church and left their slime
about her altars !
Whence all this antagonism, this furor and
wild excitement? To what cause must Ave as-
cribe it ? Ah, the Puritans* work had been well
done. Puritanism, though it had passed away as
a system, had left some of its evil fruits behind it.
Unreasoning hatred of every Catholic usage was
one of the marks of that peculiar system of relig-
ion, and many who were not Puritans but Anglican
Churchmen had come to share this feeling, and
so the first movement in the direction of a more
implicit obedience to the plain teaching of the
Prayer Book was met on every side with loud
cries of " No Popery ! " The nation took fright,
nay, a panic set in ; riots ensued and blood-
shed was threatened. Even the Bishops became
alarmed, and they issued their episcopal fulmi-
nations against the new teachings as subverting
the principles of the Reformation. One of these,
more emphatic in his language than his breth-
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND IN OUR TIMES 2$/
ren, declared the new teaching to be '' the master-
piece of Satan."
And what do you suppose all this was about?
Only about the decorations of churches and the
establishment of choral services, preaching in a
surplice and having credence tables, and teaching
that the Anglican Church was the Holy Catholic
Church for Anglicans. But law was on the side
of the Oxford teachers as well as Catholic cus-
tom. Those teachers were the foremost scholars
of the day, and the names of more than one of
them will live in history. John Keble — a schol-
ar and a poet — was the real author, under God,
of the movement, which had for leaders Hugh
James Rose, Richard Hurrell Froude, and Ed-
ward Bouverie Pusey. These were they who,
through good report and ill, were leading the
Church to know herself and her own power. Did
men speak of doctrine, they pointed to the offices
of the Prayer Book ; did they find fault with cer-
emonies, they pointed to the ornaments rubric at
the very front of the Service for Morning Pray-
er:
" And here it is to be noted that such ornaments of the
Church and of the ministers thereof at all times of their minis-
tration shall be retained and be in use, as were in this Church
17
253 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
of England, by the authority of Parliament, in the second year
of the reign of King Edward the Vlth."
Can any rule be plainer ? Is anyone in doubt
as to what a clergyman should wear in the time
of divine service, or how the church should ap-
pear, let him get a copy of the first Prayer Book
of Edward and he need doubt no longer. He
may, indeed, prefer a Geneva gown, and he may
look upon an altar cross as an abomination, but
if he does his feelings will receive a shock when
he finds that the Prayer Book speaks not of Ge-
neva gowns, nor does its ban rest upon flowers
and altar crosses.
Yet such was the panic that had seized the
public mind, that men whose only crime was obe-
dience to this plain law were thrown into prison.
No greater mistake than this could have been
made,
" Since to persecute
Makes a faith more hated."
We call to mind the case of one of these im-
prisoned clergy. He had chosen to work in a
poor and wretched part of the Diocese of Man-
chester and had literally given himself for it. He
had gone to the homes of the very poor and had
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND IN OUR TIMES 259
gathered them around him as none had ever
done there before. He had filled his church. He
had spoken to them of Jesus and bade them lead
holy, self-denying lives. True, he was " a Ritual-
ist," as the phrase goes, but by bright services
he said that he had helped his poor people to
realize something of the beauty of holiness and
to love the Church of God. But he was " a snake
in the grass," *' a Jesuit in disguise," and so they
tore him from his poor people and thrust him
into jail and kept him there till, bereft of his par-
ish, and with failing health, they opened the
doors and let him go.
My brethren, it was said of Christopher Wren,
*' If you would seek his monument, look around."
We may say the same of the Oxford movement,
Look around. The day when clergy were im-
prisoned for conscience' sake is past and gone.
But their work remains. Is there a church in
this whole American land of ours that has not
felt the power of this movement and has not
been influenced by it ? We doubt if there be one.
The reign of slovenliness is over. Restored
churches, reverent and large congregations, in-
creased interest in religion, tell their own tale.
In the days since the Oxford movement took its
260 LFXTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
rise, over $250,000,000 have been spent in England
alone on the single item of church-building res-
toration, whilst over four thousand new churches
have been built to meet the spiritual demands of
our age.
We shall never forget a procession of the fa-
thers of the Church which we once saw in Canter-
bury Cathedral. Many processions have we seen
since, but none like unto that. It made a man
proud of belonging to a Church that could ac-
complish it. Choristers and clergy, Bishops and
Archbishops, their number seemed endless as they
wended their way through the long aisles of Can-
terbury Cathedral, up to the altar steps, where
good old Archbishop Tait, in a few touching, dig-
nified words, welcomed them ; he who ** was as
good a man as ever trod in shoe-leather, mighty
good to the poor, with a face like a benediction."
Then came the sermon. Our own Bishop Stev-
ens, of Pennsylvania, now gone to rest, was the
preacher. His text we well remember : '^ Who is
this that Cometh up from the wilderness leaning
on her beloved." From all lands and from all na-
tions the Bishops had come. Daughter churches,
sister churches were all represented there. It was
an inspiring spectacle, and the preacher spoke as
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND IN OUR TIMES 261
one inspired by the splendor of the scene before
him. The Church was the Bride of Christ and
she it was who, in the persons of those Bishops,
had come up from the wilderness leaning on her
beloved !
A greater meeting has taken place since in the
same city and under the same conditions. One
hundred and forty-five Bishops came together to
tell the story of their work, and to learn that God
had blessed them all. Oh, mighty Spirit of God !
He had bidden the Oxford teachers, like the old
Hebrew prophet, breathe upon the dry bones in
the open valley ; they haxi done so, and there had
arisen and stood upright upon their feet an ex-
ceeding great army. The Church had indeed
come up from the wilderness leaning on her Be-
loved.
XVI.
AMERICA, THE HERITAGE OF OUR
CHURCH
XVI.
AMERICA, THE HERITAGE OF OUR
CHURCH
" Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the
breadth of it ; for I will give it unto thee." — Gen. xiii. 17.
In the early years of this century there gradu-
ated from the University of North Carolina a
young man, James Hervey Otey by name, whose
lot it was not only to be the first Priest of the
Church settled in Tennessee, but to be also its
first Bishop. After years of laborious efforts to
promote the cause of Christ and to provide for
the religious education of the people among
whom he lived, and from whom, in recognition
of his apostolic labors, he received the title of
•'The Good Bishop," he was gathered unto his
fathers in peace, having the testimony of a good
conscience and in the communion of the Cath-
olic Church. But ere he died he gave this
charge to those around him : " Place none other
inscription upon my tombstone than this : ' The
265 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
first Bishop of the Catholic Church in Tennes»
see.' "
I can well believe that the average Tennesseean,
standing for the first time by the grave of the
pioneer Bishop, would exclaim : " What is this
that is on this stone : ' First Bishop of the Catholic
Church?* Stranger, don't you think that the
carver of this stone has made a mistake ? Bishop
Otey didn't belong to those Catholics ; he was
one of ourselves; a Bishop of our own, and a
mighty fine man he was, too. He was a good,
sound Protestant, every inch of him, and he stood
six feet three inches in his stocking feet. And
yet this stone says : ' First Bishop of the Catho-
lic Church in Tennessee.' "
Brethren, there are sermons in stones as well
as in trees and running brooks, and there is one
here. Bishop Otey was a Catholic Bishop, and
yet he was a Protestant, too. That very stone
proclaims his Protestantism and his Catholicity.
By it he being dead yet speaketh. It is his pro-
test, graven in solid rock, against all forgetfulness
of our apostolic heritage. At one and the same
time and in one and the same words, it asserts
and it protests. And this is the character of
true Catholicit}", which is ever the assertion of
AMERICA, THE HERITAGE OF OUR CHURCH 26/
that which is true, the denial of that which is
false.
The Anglican Church to-day, while protesting
against all errors, proudly claims that her Bishops
are of the Catholic Church ; and her claim is
just. But, some may ask, how do we know that
it is just? Let us try to answer that question
now.
In this country there are two great bodies of
Christians which call themselves '' Catholic," but
of only one of them is the word commonly used.
Yet of that one it is so frequently used nowa-
days that the terms '' Catholic Priest," " Catholic
Church," are popularly taken to refer only to that
one bod}^ It is not easy to explain how this us-
age became so general, since it is not due to any
formal assertion of her exclusive right to its use
on the part of that particular Church herself. In
her official documents she makes no such claim.
We do not meet with it in the decrees of her
Councils : there we read, not of the *' Catholic
Church," but of the '^ Holy Roman Church," or
at best the " Holy Roman Catholic Church."
Nay more : it has not been the habit of that
Church in past time, in the ordinary practice and
daily business of life, thus to arrogate to her own
268 LECTURES ON CHURCH PHSTORY
exclusive use this word descriptive of the whole
Church ; of this fact any one may be a witness.
Just opposite Archbishop Corrigan's residence in
New York there is a large building with plain
black letters of iron over the entrance gateway
telling you it is " The Roman Catholic Orphan-
age," and their Archbishop in Baltimore is ex-
pressly styled (in his incorporation) as the Roman
Catholic Archbishop of Baltimore. But the fact
remains all the same that this Church alone is
popularly spoken of as " Catholic."
The other body which calls itself Catholic is
our own Church, commonly styled the " Protes-
tant Episcopal," which name, however, is mere-
ly the civil name of our local Church. In the
Creeds we may see her true ecclesiastical name
' — she is the Hofy Catholic and Apostolic Church.
We have, then, these two churches, both claim-
ing to represent Catholic Christianity. Now the
body which can alone make good this claim is
that of which we are members. She is the Cath-
olic Church, and locally there can be no other
here. As applied to another, the term is a mis-
nomer and is misleading. To our Church, and
not to another, God has given this land, saying,
as He said to Abraham at Bethel, " Arise, walk
AMERICA, THE HERITAGE OF OUR CHURCH 269
through the land in the length of it and in the
breadth of it, for I will give it unto thee."
First. Our Anglican Church is the Church of
the Anglo-Saxon race, and as such is rightfully
supreme here. God has clearly ordained that
His Church shall spread on national lines. Now
this country was long ago taken possession of by
men of the Anglo-Saxon race. The place where
they dwelt on the other side of the sea was too
strait for them, and they came seeking a larger
field for their energies and a roomier dwelling-
place ; they acquired this land as men have ever
acquired new territories, by their sword and by
their bow. Theirs was the right of conquest.
When King John in mediseval times in England
challenged the rights of the barons to the lands
they claimed, a hundred swords flew out of their
scabbards and strong voices forthwith declared :
" By these we won them, and by these we will
maintain them ! " This country, too, was won,
not by kings' grants, written on parchment, but
by force of arms. Only thus did the red men re-
treat before the pale face, and the birch-bark tent
of the savage give place to the rude cabin of the
settler. It is thus that
" Westward the course of empire takes its way."
270 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
Was it not right ? Was it not natural ? Was it
not demanded that the Church of the settlers
should accompany the settlers ? Our Church is,
therefore, the Church of those who have been
and still are the makers of America, and as such
she is the true Catholic Church of this land.
But, secondly, she was the first here. She first
laid the foundation of Christianity in this land.
The first Christian service here held, the first
white child baptized, the first Eucharist cele-
brated, the first Bishop consecrated, were all by
her. Let her children know this, if others will
not. Let them rejoice in the light, even if others
are still in darkness. She first carried Christ's
banner in this Western world. Let us see how
this came about.
In the sixteenth century it had become the
fashion for the younger men
" To seek preferment out —
Some to the wars, to try their fortune there,
Some to discover islands far away."
John Cabot was one of these, who, under the
auspices of King Henry VIL, on the Feast of
St. John the Baptist, 1497, first discovered the
North American Continent, and took possession
in the name of England.
AMERICA, THE HERITAGE OF OUR CHURCH 271
But not till the Reformation had been accom-
plished was England actually free to enter upon
the pathway of discovery and settlement. Then,
many an expedition was fitted out and sailed
for the distant West. Diverse were the motives
of the voyagers. Some thought most of gold ;
some of the souls of men ; but whatever the mo-
tive, every English ship carried its Chaplain.
Church and State were so allied together then
that side by side with a desire to extend com-
merce went a desire to bring the heathen into
the Christian fold. It would have been strange
had it not been so, for at that time religion filled
a large space in human life. That was the day
of great controversies ; all felt religion's force.
When, therefore, the Spaniard, in the wake of
Columbus, was going to his possessions in the
West Indies, carrying with him the gentle appli-
ances of the Inquisition to quicken the Indians'
appreciation of the beauties of the Christian faith,
the Englishman was saiHng where Cabot had
shown the way, from the rocky coasts of Labra-
dor to the Gulf-washed shores of Florida, bearing
with him his Chaplain and his Prayer Book.
Thus, e.g., did the fleet of fifteen ships which
left Harwich on May 31, 1578, under the com-
2/2 LECTURES ON CHURCH IHSTORV
niand of Martin Frobisher, carry one Maister
Wolfall, a learned man, appointed by Her Majes-
ty's Council to be their Minister. This good
man, among the ice-fields of the north, held the
first missionary service of the Reformed Church
of England. Thus does the record run : " Mais-
ter Wolfall on Winter's Furnace preached a God-
ly sermon, which being ended, he celebrated also
a Communion upon the land, at the partaking
whereof was the Captain of the Anne Francis and
many other gentlemen and soldiers with him.
The celebration of the Divine Mystery was the
first sign, seal, and confirmation of Christ's name,
death, and passion ever known in these quarters.'*
While this solemn service was being held on
the northeastern coast, a similar service was
being held on the Pacific, under the famous Sir
Francis Drake. On the north Californian coast
in 1579, three-quarters of a century after Cabot
had landed on the eastern shores, Francis Fletch-
er, the Chaplain, in the presence of Drake's crew
and the natives, besought God in the Church's
prayers to reveal Himself to the idolaters around
them, and to open their eyes to the knowledge of
Him and of Jesus Christ, the salvation of the
Gentiles.
AMERICA, THE HERITAGE OF OUR CHURCH 2/3
It was thus that the Anglican Church was then
seeking to spread His dominion from sea to sea.
It was thus that within what is now the territory
of these United States, the Church's Prayer Book
was first used. Well may the Celtic cross which
has lately been erected in sight of the Pacific on
a spot so sacred to Catholic Churchmen lift up
itself in proud pre-eminence ; for there, in the
summer of 1579, ^^^ prayers of the Anglican
Church were the first prayers to be offered in all
this wide land.
Thus Cabot on the east and Drake on the west
had both claimed this new world for Anglican
Christianity, and had planted the standard of the
cross in the sight of wondering natives ; but
they made no permanent settlement. They came
and they returned to tell the story of their wan-
derings in their fatherland. When other men
followed them, not for discovery but for settle-
ment, they were men of a like faith with Cabot
and Drake, who made their new home as nearly
as they could like the old one across the sea. At
Roanoke Island in Virginia ^ lived the first-fruits
of those sixty odd millions of people who now in-
habit this land. Here Manteo, the first Indian
convert of our Church, was baptized; here too,
1 Then North Carolina.
18
274 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
was baptized Virginia Dare, grand-daughter of
the governor, and the first child of white parents
born in the New World. But the infant settle-
ment was doomed to extinction. An Indian mas-
sacre came, and with it the end of Roanoke Col-
ony.
Another settlement was, however, soon made at
Jamestown, where the good Anglican priest, Al-
exander Whittaker, earned the title of " Apostle
to the Indians ; " and there the seed took final
root. The Church there became so strong that
even the storms which beat upon the old Church
across the seas did not disturb her. Whilst the
Puritans under Cromwell were breaking down
rood screens and tearing up surplices, burning
Prayer Books and cutting off Bishops' heads, she
was going on the even tenor of her way, for
Church and State were firm friends in Virginia,
But some may say, " Oh, yes, we grant that in
Virginia the Anglican Church was there from the
first, but what have you to say about Maryland ?
Was not Maryland first settled by Roman Catho-
lics, just as Virginia had been by Anglo-Catho-
lics ? " Well, that Maryland was settled under a
Roman Catholic baron we have been told from
childhood ; but it was only so in legal fiction.
AMERICA, THE HERITAGE OF OUR CHURCH 2/5
In plain, honest history, Mar3dand was like Vir-
ginia, a colony of English Churchmen, and was
never a formal settlement of Roman Catholics
merely, neither were the Roman Catholics ever a
majority here. The fact is that Maryland was first
settled from Virginia between the years 1624 and
1628; and on Kent Island there was early a com-
munity strong enough to maintain its own Rec-
tor, the Rev. V/illiam James, who ministered to
his flock before any Romanist ever saw Mar}- land.
But whence has this error arisen ? In this
way : Cecilius Calvert, the second Lord Balti-
more, who received a grant of eight millions of
acres from King Charles, happened to be a Ro-
man Catholic. This grant was made on June 16,
1632 ; and in 1633-1634 Cecilius, Lord Baltimore,
sent his brother Leonard Calvert to take posses-
sion as governor of the lands thereby granted.
With Leonard Calvert there came two hundred
men, and it is fondly assumed that these were
Roman Catholics, but on what ground ? Be-
cause the Calverts were Roman Catholic? As
well might one say that they were all peers of
Ireland because the Lord Baltimore was such a
peer, or that they all bore the name of Calvert
because he bore that name. The majority, the
276 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
great majorit}^ of those early settlers were cer-
tainly not Roman Catholics. They were Protes-
tants, or as they called themselves, '' Protestant
Catholics." Father White, the Jesuit, tells us
that at the Christmas festival, which they spent
in the West Indies, on th^ir way out from Eng-
land, some of them drank so immoderately of the
wine there that about thirty of the number were
seized with fever the next day and twelve of
them died, two being Catholics. Observe, not the
twelve, but only two of them. Was not this the
proportion the Romanists bore to the whole num-
ber ?
Let any one to-day travel through southern
Maryland and he will find abundant evidences
of the fact that English Churchmen were ever
the stronger party. Before 1692, when the coun-
try was divided into parishes, there were eight
large churches, of one of which the writer had
once the privilege for some time to be the Rec-
tor ; and even to-day in the very landing-place of
the original settlers at St. Mar3^'s City, an Angli-
can church alone is to be seen — even the cross re-
cently erected by the State, which celebrates the
arrival of Governor Leonard Calvert, stands in
the churchyard of our own St. Mary's Church.
AMERICA, THE HERITAGE OF OUR CHURCH 2/7
It is the same throughout this whole countr3\
The Anglican Church was here first and has ever
regarded herself as the Church of the people, has
3ver heard God's voice speaking to her and say-
ing, " Arise, walk through the land in the length
of it and in the breadth of it, for I will give it unto
thee ! " And it is but a very recent fiction that
Maryland was settled a Roman Catholic colony.
Thirdly, our Church's constitution shows her
the truly Catholic Church of America. She is a
national Church and as such is independent of
foreign rule. It is far different with the self-called
Holy Roman Church, for she is a mere exotic
here. She does not claim to be independent of
foreign control. She is here, as she is in Eng-
land, merely an Italian mission, and she can
never be otherwise whilst her Bishops are but
the creatures of the Propaganda and the Bish-
op of Rome. Even the decrees of the Council
of Trent they have never dared to promulgate
here. The Roman Church amongst us is there-
fore nothing but a missionary body, carrying out
the policy of the papal court in Italy under the
personal supervision of the alien Archbishop Sa-
toUi, and until she throws off that yoke she can
never be otherwise.
2/8 LECTURES ON CHURCH HISTORY
On the contrary, our American Church is a
national, autonomous Church, absolutely inde-
pendent of alien potentate or power. On that
day when the first four American Bishops con-
secrated Thomas John Claggett, the first Bishop
ever consecrated in America, to be the first Bish-
op of Maryland, her independent organization
was openly complete. Since then she has been a
Church whose seed is in itself upon the earth.
She has had no cause to lean upon another for
help. She has had no need to seek for papal able-
gates or similar officers not papal to settle the
disputes of Bishops, and to help them set our
house in order. She is, in fact, the one Church
here, while the Roman Church still remains a
missionary society. Hers is the primitive faith,
hers, too, the Apostolical Succession through the
long line of Catholic Bishops in the past, reach-
ing even to the Lord Himself, the Chief Shep-
herd and Bishop of souls.
Thus backward we have traced our Church's
history, first to England through Norman and
Saxon and British times, till we meet with those
early apostolic missionaries who came from the
cradle and source of all Christianity, and through
them we journey back to Jerusalem. So far back
AMERICA, THE HERITAGE OF OUR CHURCH 279
do we easily trace our lineage. And to us at
this day we hear still given that Divine com-
mand : '' Arise, walk through the land in the
length of it and in the breadth of it, for I will
give it unto thee."
A SELECTED LIST
OF
RECENT THEOLOGICAL BOOKS
PUBLISHED BY
LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO.
NEW YORK
BISHOP A. C. A. HALL.
The Virgin Mother. Retreat Addresses on the Life of
the Blessed Virgin Mary, as Told in the Gospels. With an
Appended Essay on the Virgin Birth of Our Lord. By the
Rt. Rev. A. C. A. Hall, D.D., Bishop of Vermont. i2mo,
$1.25.
" It is often said, and the saying is true, that Protestantism and Anglicanism have
lost something of sweet Christian tenderness in their extreme reaction from the semi-
idolatrous cultus of the Blessed Virgin which prevailed in the Middle Ages. We have
not the slightest tendency to that form of doctrinal aberration ; nor would it be possi-
ble, we suppose, for any clear-minded Englishman or American to join in the glowing
but hyperbolical addresses to the Mother of our Lord which are found in the liturgies
of Oriental Churches ; yet it does seem that something has been lost in our habitual
forgetfulness of the human being to whom our blessed Lord in His earthly life was
nearest and dearest, and who, doubtless, of all the sons and daughters of men, was—
nay, perhaps still is— nearest and dearest to Him. In this little volume, Bishop Hall
very admirably and delicately discourses of the Blessed Virgin with the reverent affec-
tion which is due to her, and yet without the slightest approach to the extravagances
which our church has rightly and wisely banished. In a brief appendix, he has
written a few timely words on the subject of the virgin birth of our Lord, considered
as an article of the Christian faith."— The Church Standard, Philadelphia.
CANON SCOTT HOLLAND.
God's City: Four Addresses delivered at St. Asaph on the
Spiritual and Ethical Value of Belief in the Church. To
which are added six sermons on kindred subjects. By the
Rev. H. S. Holland, M.A., Canon and Precentor of St.
Paul's. Crown 8vo, $2.00.
" As to their teaching, we think them to be admirable models of the spirit in which
instruction concerning the church should be given. . . . The doctrine is both full
and strong, and is enriched by that wealth of illustration which characterizes all the
author's writings."— The Churchman, New York.
"We sometimes wonder why some sermons find their way into print ; but ser-
mons such as these are in character of an inspiration that not only find their way into
print, but into the hearts and lives of all who hear or read them."
— Thb Living Church, Chicago.
LOXGMANS, GREEN, 6- CO: S RECEXT PUBLICA TIOXS.
CANON LIDDON.
Clerical Life and Work. A Collection of Sermons with
an Essay on "The Priest in his Inner Life." By the Rev.
Henry Parry Liddon, D.D., LL.D., D.C.L., late Canon
and Chancellor of St. Paul's. Crown 8vo, $2.00.
" This is a collection of sermons addressed at various times to the clergry. They
present a hijfh and serious view of clerical life, which had been slowly developing in
the preacher's mind from early life.
There is very little of distinctly ' High Church ' opinions in them, but they
tnke a strong hold on the subject in hand, and handle it in no ordinary way. We
especially commend to our clerical friends the sermons on Our Lord's Example the
Stretis:th 0/ His Ministers, The Secret of Clerical Power, and The Moral Value of
a Mission from Christ'^ — The Independent.
NEW VOLUME OF CANON LIDDON' S LIFE OF DR. PUSEY.
Life of Edward Bouverie Pusey, D.D. By Henry
Parry Liddon, D.D., D.C.L., LL.D. Edited and prepared
for publication by the Rev. J. O. Johnston, M.A , Vicar of
All Saints', Oxford, and the Rev. Robert J. Wilson, D.D.,
Warden of Keble College. 4 vols., 8vo. With Portraits and
Illustrations. Vol. I. and II., $9.00 7iet Vol. III.,
$4,50 net
" This volume deals with what may be considered, on the whole, the most impor-
tant period of all in the history of the Oxford revival." — Standard.
" Our first feeling in laying down this long expected ' Life of Dr. Pusey' is one of
satisfaction that so important a subject had so able a biographer. In whatever age
Dr. Pusey had lived, his life would have been worth recording, for it was great in its
natural gifts, great also in its powers of devotion. . . . Here as in his most admir-
able commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, Dr. Liddon takes nothing for granted.
He is at great pains not only to make every name and event intelligible, but fresh and
living. A sentence in a letter of Dr. Arnold's is a trifle obscure — a foot-note explains
it. An epoch which in any other hands would have been dull and uninteresting to the
English public, Dr. Pusey's studies in Germany, becomes under Dr. Liddon one of
the freshest chapters in the book. Eichorn, Tholuck, Schleiermacher, and Neander
are living portraits. And yet all this illustrative matter is kept carefully subordinate.
You never forget Dr. Pusey. The author is lost in his subject." — The Churchman.
" The result proves that it is well worth waiting for. Valuable as is this work for
the portraiture of a great man, it has an especial value for the light it throws upon the
Oxford movement from contemporaneous history and documents. The work is
indeed most complete and proiected on a grand scale, as is due to one who played
so 'profoundlv influential ' apart in the great religious awakening of this century. . . .
" As a literarv nndertakitig it exhibits the tenderness of touch, the grasp of
details, the felicitv of expression, the ripe scholarship, the thorough acquaintance
with all the literature that could illustrate his subject, that mark all the writings of
Dr. Liddon."— The Living Church.
" More has been expected of Canon Liddon's biography than from any other book
that has attempted to deal with the grent Church Revival of the century, and the
just anticipations of those who are interested in it will be realized. Canon Liddon
restrains himself from every temptation to excess of statement or elaboration. When-
ever important points are' treated, no pains are spared to give accurate and full
information, and his opinions are never wanting where they are demanded. The fur-
ther volumes in this biogranliv will be awaited with eager interest." — The Outlook.
LONGMANS, GREEN, &- CO.'S RECENT PUBLICATIONS.
REV. C. ERNEST SMITH.
The Old Church in the New Land. Lectures on
Church History. By the Rev. C. Ernest Smith, M.A.,
Rector of the Church of St. Michael and All Angels, Balti-
more, Md., Examining Chaplain to the Bishop of Maryland.
With a Preface by the Bishop of Maryland. Crown 8vo,
cloth, $1.25.
"We heartily endorse the recommendation of the Bishop of Mar^•land, and we
go further ; we should say that this little book is perhaps the very best historical ac-
count of the Church of England for family reading that we have ever seen ; and an at-
tentive congregation to which these lectures should be read would be well prepared to
vindicate the position of the Anglican Church against the assaults of either Rome or
Geneva. It is not a controversial book, but its statements are so plain as to make
argument superfluous." — The Church Standard.
" These lectures deserve all the praise we can give them. We strongly recom-
mend their addition to parish libraries, and their studv to teachers, lav readers, and to
not a few of the clergy. They retell the slory of the old church in the new land with
an accuracy of detail both in fact and doctrine that is refreshing, and with a style as
vigorous and pointed as it is clear." — The American Church Almanac, 1895.'
" Here is a book for every member of the Brotherhood to own and study. Mr.
Smith very justly says : ' A knowledge of some of the chief facts in the history of the
church has become almost a necessity to every churchman, and there are, conse-
quently, few subjects upon which lecture-sermons can more appropriately be preached
in our day than on Church History, especially on the history of our own branch.
To some persons this may seem a very unedifying kind of a subject ; they prefer what
is known as " Gospel preaching" ; they have indeed no interest in any other; and if,
unfortunately, they are compelled to listen to any other, they imagine there is no help
in it, and are none the better for it, but rather the worse.'
" This is all true enough, and when this instruction is given with a clearness
and freshness that illuminate the subject, it becomes a pleasure as well as a duty to
receive it. . . . V\'ith a scholarship which is never heavy, with a belief in the
Catholic Church which never descends into mere partisanism, the lectures, in the
words of the Bishop of Maryland who writes the preface, admirably fulfill their pur-
pose 'to trace the links of that continuity (between the Church in America and the
Church in England) to make churchmen feel sure, through tliem of an apostolic origin,
to help them know that this is no late-born sect, but that in it we are in the very
" fellowship of the Apostles." . . . Make yourself a . . . present of this book,
read it, digest it, and then lend it as widely as possible among your friends."
— St. Andrew's Cross.
" The whole ston- is told in strong and clear outline, in a very interesting and
instructive wav, atid anv one who follows the plain teaching in this little volume can-
not fail to be convinced of the identitv of our church with that church which the
Lord Jesus founded. We wish that everv lavman would read it, for we are sure he
would find it full of strength and truth."— The Living Church.
THE BAMPTON LECTURES FOR 1893.
Inspiration : Eight Lectures on the Early History
and Origin of the Doctrine of Biblical Inspiration.
Being the Bampton Lectures for 1893. By the Rev. W.
Sanday, M.A., D.D., LL.D., Dean Ireland's Professor of
Exegesis, Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, Preacher at
Whitehall. 8vo, $4.00.
LONGMANS, GREEN, ^ CO:S RECENT PUBLICATIONS.
ABBfi FOUARD.
Saint Paul and his Missions. By the Abb^ Constant
FouARD. Translated with the Author's sanction and co-
operation by the Rev. George F. X. Griffith. With 2 Maps.
Small 8vo, cloth, gilt top, $2.00.
" This work may not have the breadth of learning which one finds in the 'St.
yaul ' of Conybeare and Howson ; it certainly has not the buoyancy of Archdeacon
Farrar's work on the same subject ; it makes no pretension to the minute accuracy of
Lewin ; but it is a very admirable work, for all that, and to the average reader it will
be even more instructive than its predecessors. Its author, of course, is a clergyman
of the Roman Catholic Church ; but his candor is above all praise, and his account of
the church in apostolic days is absolutely faithful to historical fact. Indeed, we find
that he explicitly states facts which writers in our own church would hesitate to affirm.
The candor and simplicity which we find everywhere in the historical treatment
of our author's subject we find not less striking when he deals with doctrine ; and
in his discussion of the Epistle to the Romans, his treatment of justification by faith
is so thoroughly Scriptural that one cannot help wondering at the wearisome scho-
lastic logomachy which, in the sixteenth century, so needlessly obscured the plain
teaching of the Word of God. Taking it all in all, we have nothing but commendation
for the Abbe Fouard's ' St. Paul.' "—The Church Standard.
"We give a hearty welcome to this new book of the Abbe Fouard's. His 'Saint
Peter and the First Years of Christianity ' will have raised the expectations of students
who have known it, but we think that even they will be hardly prepared for so
delightful and interesting a book as this of the life of St. Paul. With such good work
as that of Conybeare and Howson, Lewin and Archdeacon Farrar, the English scholar
scarcely expects to find any fresh treatment of so well worn a theme. But whilst it is
true that there is not much that is new, the setting and presentation of St. Paul's life
is delightfully fresh and interesting. The descriptions of^ his journeys are given with
all that color and life which French artists give to their landscapes, and long quota-
tions from his letters are quite skillfully interwoven into the text, so that we feel that
we know St. Paul better than we did before we took up the Abbe's work.
There are good maps, a full index, and an abundant supply of notes and refer-
ences. We have had no opportunity of comparing the translation with the original,
but we can say that it is eminently readable. On the whole, we believe there are few
lives of St. Paul which the ordinary Bible student will find more attractive and helpful
than this of the learned Abb6." — The Churchman.
" This volume follows in connected series ' Saint Peter and the First Years of
Christianity,' by the same author and from the same publishers. The Abb6 Fouard
has been fortunate in his translator, M-ho has succeeded in carrying over into his English
rendering much of the vivacious and eloquent perspicuity of the original French work.
Abb6 Fouard has done his work in this volume with great freedom. He touches
the great notes of Pauline doctrine strongly, and proclaims them with an enthusiasm
wholly his own. The translation enriches English theology with a volume catholic
in tone and scholarship, and whose merits in the original form have been recognized
in France." — The Independent.
B V THE SAME A UTHOR.
*The Christ, the Son of God.' A Life of Our Lord and
Saviour Jesus Christ. With an Introduction by Cardinal
Manning. 2 vols., small 8vo, cloth, gilt top, with 3 Maps,
$4.00.
St. Peter and the First Years of Christianity. With an
Introduction by Cardinal Gibbons. With 3 Maps. Small
8vo, cloth, gilt top, $2.00.
4
LONGMANS, GREEN, ^ CO:S RECENT PUBLICA TIONS.
THE BISHOP PADDOCK LECTURES, 1894.
The Permanent Value of the Book of Genesis as an
Integral Part of the Christian Revelation. By the Rev.
C. W. E. Body, M.A., D.C.L., Professor of Old Testament
Literature and Interpretation in the General Theological
Seminary, New York ; Sometime Provost of Trinity Col-
lege, Toronto, and Fellow of St. John's College, Cam-
bridge. Crown 8vo, $1.50.
" No greater service could have been rendered at this time to the average body
of the church clergy than these four lectures by Prof. Body. Within the limited
space restricted to the Paddock Lectures he has managed to give a comprehensive
review of the so-called Higher Criticism, its history and principal authors, the various
theories and conclusions of its literary analysis of the Old Testament, bringing to the
front its unresolved problems, and philosophic or logical objections that are fatal to
its assumptions, and, above all, bringing out that moral and spiritual character and
purpose which stamps the Biblia Sacra as a Revelation from God for the behoof of
man, but which mere perfunctory critical scholarship as completely misses, as the
science of botany would do that confined itself to mere dried leaves, stamens, and
pistils, and details of classification, without leading to the consideration of properties
and uses, relation to pharmacopeia, commercial value, or benefit to mankind. Any
Christian will be delighted with the incidental replies to Dr. Briggs, and the masterly
expose of critical fallacies among German writers, especially the final discrediting of
the presumptuous and utterly groundless dogmatism of such writers of the extreme
school of Kuenen and Wellhausen.
The fourth lecture on Creation and Paradise, and the fifth on the Deluge and
the Patriarchs are intensely interesting, and show how Prof. Sayce and the Monuments
of Archaeology are rapidly making short work of much of the learned ignorance of the
Higher Criticisms. There are several interesting appendices."
—The Church Eclectic, Utica, N. Y.
THE BISHOP PADDOCK LECTURES, 1892.
The Sacramental System Considered as the Extension
of the Incarnation. By Morgan Dix, S.T.D., D.C.L.,
Rector of Trinity Church, New York. Crown 8vo, 260
pages, $1.50.
" We have been always hoping that the church of these scientific days might be
able to show how deeply grounded the sacramental system is in nature, and the first
of these lectures leads us to feel that we shall not be disappointed. Dr. Dix . . ,
shows what the teaching of the church respecting nature has been ; . . . what the
remedial and restorative effect of the Incarnation in nature may be. . . . It is im-
possible in the short space of a review to do justice to the argument in these two first
chapters, which we feel to be of great importance in these days."— The Churchman.
" Presented, as it is in these pages, in a fresh and lively way, in clear and per-
suasive argument, it touches the soul, excites the imagination, and deepens one's faith
. . . The treatment is scholarly and philosophical, the discussion logical and con-
clusive, the style clear and calm, and the volume is timelv and helpt'ul."
—The Living Church.
" It is most gratifying to have Dr. Dix's lectures on the sacramental system in
permanent and availableform. The volume will prove a valuable addition to the
religious literature, not of the day only, hut of the age. . . . The logical arrange-
ment of the material is admirable, and the diction at once stately and precise."
—St. Andrew's Cross.
LONGMANS, GREEN, b' CO:s RECENT PUBLICA TIONS.
THE DEAN OF CHRIST CHURCH.
Studies in the Christian Character. Sermons with an
Introductory Essay. By Francis Paget, D.D., Dean of
Christ Church, Oxford ; Sometime Vicar of Bromsgrove.
Crown 8vo, $1.75.
CANON BRIGHT.
Waymarks in Church History. By the Rev. William
Bright, D.D., Canon of Christ Church, and Regius Pro-
fessor of Ecclesiastical History in the University of Oxford.
Crown 8vo, $2.00.
"The present volume . . . is the production of a man who has ctiltivated the
habit of going to original sources for his materials, and who is at once a scholar and
a thinker. While he is everywhere passionately devoted to the Church of England,
he is also a universal scholar, and his writing can be trusted as substantially correct.
He is one of the few English writers of to-day who carries the methods of literature
into the study of theology and the writing of church history, and his sketches in every
instance are fresh and strong and clear." — Boston Herald.
" Dr. Bright is so well known to readers in church history that, with them at
least, no book of his needs any recommendation. This volume, however, appeals to
a wider audience than students of history. It is as truly theological as it is historical
, . . we have in succession a brief but scholarly treatment of the great religious
questions of the first eight centuries of the church's life; and our interest is main-
tained by the manner in which they have been grouped round living men. . . .
Twelve valuable appendices give a more complete treatment of some of the serious
questions raised in the book than was possible in the text. . . . Enough has been
said, we hope, to persuade the lover of theological books to include this in his next
purchase, for of the many valuable books that are being added to our theological
libraries, there are few more immediately useful than the one we have noticed."
—The Churchman,
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
Faith and Life. Readings for the Greater Holy Days,
and the Sundays from Advent to Trinity. Compiled from
Ancient Writers. Second Edition. Small 8vo, $1.75.
Morality in Doctrine. Sermons. Small 8vo, $2.00.
Lessons from the Lives of Three Great Fathers :
St. Athanasius, St. Chrysostom, and St. Augustine. With
Appendices. Crown 8vo, $2.00.
"The lectures, as their title indicates, are rather anecdotical than biographical.
As such they are suggestive, and will doubtless help readers that are not themselves
students of the F"athers, to a clearer conception of the characters and services of the
three men." — Christian Literature.
The Incarnation as a Motive Power. Sermons. Second
Edition. Crown 8vo, $2.00.
LONGMANS, GREEN, &^ CO:S RECENT PUBLIC A TIONS.
REV. HERBERT BRANSTON GRAY.
*' Men of Like Passions": Being Characters of some
Bible Heroes and Otlier Sermons. Preached to Bradfield
Boys. By the Rev. Herbert Branston Gray, D.D.,
Warden of Bradfield College, Berks. Crown 8vo, $1.75.
"The first thing that strikes the reader of these sermons will assuredly be their
fitness for their purpose. . . . The sermons are partly sermons on the saints of
the Prayer Book and partly on some of the Old Testament characters, with one or
two occasional commemorative discourses. All are brief, pointed, and thoughtful,
and we can assure our readers that they are well worth the study of much older
and more instructed hearers than those for whom they are prepared."
—The Churchman.
" They are manly in tone, earnest in spirit, and must have been very interesting
to listen to. Like a master bowman he cleans the mark he aims at, and under such
teaching the boys of Bradfield ought to develop into manly men. They may be read
with advantage by anybody, but every one who has to do with boys, parents as well as
teachers, would find very much that is helpful and profitable." — Pacific Churchman.
REV. A. J. HARRISON.
The Repose of Faith: In View of Present-Day Diffi-
culties. By the Rev. Alexander J. Harrison, B.D.,
Vicar of Lightcliffe, Evidential Missioner of the Church
Parochial Mission Society, and Lecturer of the Christian
Evidence Society, Boyle Lecturer, 1892, etc. Crown 8vo,
$2.00.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
Problems of Christianity and Scepticism. Lessons
from Twenty Years' Experience in the Field of Christian
Evidence. Crown 8vo, $2.25.
" So wise and practical a volume as this cannot fail to do great good. . . . The
style of the book is popular throughout. . . . The third book is a summary of
lessons drawn from his own history. It describes the work he has done in the Ime
of the subject of the volume, a work which has been his specialty for a long time, and
considers all practical matters suggested at one or another point. The whole volume,
and this portion of it in particular, will be found serviceable by all who have oppor-
tunities of influencing those of a sceptical frame of mind. We commend the work to
Christians also, not merely for its valuable statements of their views of truth, but
quite as much because of its importance as an example of good sense, courtesy, and
tact in religious argument." — The Congregationalist.
The Church in Relation to Sceptics. A Conversa-
tional Guide to Evidential Work. Crown 8vo, $2.00.
" Mr. Harrison has had many years' practical experience in the work to which
this may be regarded as a hand-book, and an extremely good one it is. . . . The
book is a most helpful one, and every one engaged in pastoral work would find it an
invaluable help."— Pacific Churchman.
LONGMANS, GREEN, ^^ CO:S RECENT PUBLIC A TIONS.
DEAN LUCKOCK.
The History of Marriage, Jewish and Christian,
in Relation to Divorce and Certain Forbidden Degrees.
By the Rev. Herbert Mortimer Luckock, D.D., Dean
of Lichfield. Crown 8vo, $1.75.
" This volume is full of original and patient research, characterized by broad his-
torical grasp and ample learning, and written in a pleasant and agreeable style."
— The Living Church.
CANON MACCOLL.
Life Here and Hereafter. Sermons. By the Rev.
Malcolm Maccoll, M.A., Canon Residentiary of Ripon.
Crown 8vo, $2.25. 1
CANON NEWBOLT.
Speculum Sacerdotum ; or, The Divine Model of the
Priestly Life. By the Rev. W. C. E. Newbolt, M.A.,
Canon and Chancellor of St. Paul's. Crown 8vo, $2.00.
"We have nothing but praise for this beautiful collection of addresses which Dr.
Liddon's able successor has, to use his own modest phrase, ' submitted to the kindness
and forbearance of those whose lives are a constant exposition of the inspired words
of the apostle, in the ranks of the Anglican clergy. . . .' The author knows whereof
he speaks, and, accordingly, every word tells. We know of no book that would give
such real help to the clergy as this, none that would be so suitable as a gift to those
about to be ordained on Trinity Sunday. Such encouragement and warning given at
the outset of a man's ministry might change and uplift it."
—The Churchman, New York.
" We consider it a great pity that such a book as this, so freighted with instruction,
so full of spirituality, so graceful in expression, so gracious in spirit, should be sent
out under a title which implies that it is intended for the clergy only. There is a com-
pensation, however, in the thought that every clergyman who reads it will be likely to
preach it over and over again to the people of his charge."
—The Church Standard, Philadelphia.
"... A book which every clergyman ought to read and re-read till he has
thoroughly assimilated it and wrought it into the very texture of his being. Candi-
dates for Holy Orders, and the younger clergy especially, should make a special study
of it. The book is invaluable. . . ." — Pacific Churchman.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
Counsels of Faith and Practice : Being Sermons Preached
on Various Occasions. New and Enlarged Edition. Crown
8vo, $1.50.
" What men are crying out for is not so much intellectual as spiritual wisdom ; not
so much theology as the application of theology to their own spiritual needs. And
this need is abundantly met by those strong, thoughtful, and stimulating ' Counsels of
Faith and Practice.' "—The Churchman.
LONGMANS, GREEN, &- CO.'S RECENT PUBLICATIONS.
CANON T. T. CARTER.
Nicholas Ferrar : His Household and his Friends. Edited
by the Rev. T. T. Carter, M.A., Hon Canon of Christ
Church, Oxford. With Portrait engraved after a picture
by Cornelius Janssen at Magdalene College, Cambridge.
Crown 8vo, $1.75.
" The little volume before us is a real boon to the church. It might well be made
a part of the Lent reading of those who would know what types of saintliness, after
the ancient model, the Anglican Church has been able to produce."— Living Church.
BISHOP COPLESTON.
Buddhism, Primitive and Present ; in Magadha and
Ceylon. By Reginald Stephen Copleston, D.D.,
Bishop of Colombo, President of the Ceylon Branch of
the Royal Asiatic Society. 8vo, $5.00.
"Notwithstanding the numerous works on Buddhism recently issued, there was
room for a book which, neglecting the side-growths, should undertake to give a con-
tinuous history of the primitive faith of Gotama. This task Bishop Copleston has
performed with excellent judgment and skill."— The Nation, New York.
REV. WYLLYS REDE, M.A.
The Communion of Saints. By the Rev. Wyllys Rede,
M.x\., Rector of Emmanuel Church, Rockford, Illinois.
With a Preface by Lord Halifax. Crown 8vo, $1.25.
" The substance of this book was delivered in a course of lectures at St. Mark's,
Evanston, 111., during the Lent of 1S92. There is an introduction by Lord Halifax,
President of the English Church Union, which is in itself a clear statement of the doc-
trine which Air. Rede expounds in the book. But we do not agree with the assertion
on the title-pa,2:e that it is a ' Lost Link in the Church's Creed.' Whatever obscura-
tion it suffered in past days, it has now emerged from into the very forefront of church
teaching. However, if this was one of the motives which led to the production of the
book, we are disposed to rejoice in the assumption to which we are indebted for a
very clev^er and sympathetic work. The leading idea of the book is the permanence
of relationships in the Body of Christ, which is His Church, and the Communion of
Sanits.
There is a chapter on ' Prayers for the Dead,' which puts that matter in a very
clear and reasonable light. The book is valuable as a clear exposition of the teaching
of the church concerning the fellowship, the brotherhood which in her mind exists
between all who are bajjtized into the Church of Christ, whether living or departed.
And it will be found no less valuable as affording the truest and most efficacious con-
solation to all the sad companv of those who grieve because their friends are not.
One turns away with almost angry impatience from the wearisome commonplaces with
which many good people seek to bind up the breaking heart— for they act like salt
upon a raw'wound. It is onlv in the truth that all are one in Christ, the doctrine of
the Communion of Saints, that any healing for such sorrow resides. Therefore, both
on this account and for the clear statement of this doctrine, the book is a very valua-
ble one, and deserves to be not only widely read by church people, but carefully
digested."— Pacific Churchman.
LONGMANS, GREEN, &- CO:S RECENT PUBLICA TIONS.
The Inheritance of the Saints ; or, Thoughts on the
Communion of Saints and the Life of the World to Come.
Collected chiefly from English Writers by L. P. With a
Preface by the Rev. H. Scott Holland, M.A., Canon and
Precentor of St. Paul's. Crown 8vo, $2.00.
" We can heartily commend it as full of sweet thoughts. It is not at all authori-
tative, but there is nothing authoritative in these subjects. The devout will read it
and bless God." — Standard of the Cross.
"Selected and put together with much care and skill, and under the guiding
motive of a dominant churchly spirit, and a strong desire to help the children of faith
to realize on earth the reality and nearness of the world to come as well as their own
relation to the City and Kingdom of God."— The Independent.
" Though this admirable volume is a compilation of the thoughts of others it will
be as widely read, we believe, as though it were the original work of its author. The
book is well arranged, the subjects for the most part being illustrated by a text, pass-
ages from authors in prose or verse, and a prayer. It would make a suitable and
acceptable Easter gift."— The Churchman.
Verba Verbi Dei: The Words of Our Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ. Harmonized by the Author of '* Charles
Lowder." With an Introduction on the Different Periods
in Our Lord's Life on Earth. Crown 8vo, $1.50.
" This is a book which everybody ought to have at hand. It contains the words
of our Lord alone, and there are times when one cares to read or think of no other
words than His. Even apostles and prophets mav sometimes be properly included
in the words of Saint Thomas a Kempis : ' Let all the doctors hold their peace ; speak
Thou alone to me.' The words are arranged in successive periods, including (i) the
words of our Saviour as a child, at His baptism, and in the temptation ; (2) at the
beginning of his ministry ; (3) during His first public ministry in Galilee ; (4) during
His ministry in Judea, and subsequently to the last Passover; (5) during the week of
His passion; (6) during the great Forty Davs, and afterwards to Annanias and St.
Paul. We heartily commend this compilation to all students of Holy Scripture."
— The Church Standard.
" The book is chiefly intended for devotional use, and its unique plan, its lucid
arrangement, and its consistent self-restriction to the ipsissima verba of our Lord,
will assuredly give it a very high place among books of that class."
—The Churchman.
REV. G. R. PRYNNE.
The Truth and Reality of the Eucharistic Sacrifice,
Proved from Holy Scripture, the Teaching of the Primitive
Church, and the Book of Common Prayer. By George
RuNDLE Prynne, M.A., Vicar of St. Peter's, Plymouth;
Author of '' The Eucharistic Manual," etc. Crown 8vo,
$1.25.
" An admirable presentation of the subject. Mr. Prjmne's book is brief and read-
able, and contains in a concise form some of the most salient facts and arguments
which have been adduced by learned divines in support of the truth and reality of the
Eucharistic Sacrifice."— The Churchman.
10
LONGMANS, GREEN, d- CO." S RECENT PUBLICATIONS,
REV, RICHARD W. HILEY, D.D.
A Year's Sermons. Based upon some of the Scriptures
appointed for each Sunday Morning. By the Rev.
Richard Vy\ Hiley, D.D., of St. Mary Hall, Oxford, Vicar
of Wighill, Tadcaster, Yorkshire. In two volumes. Vol. I.,
January — June. Vol. II., July — December. Crown 8vo,
each, §2.00.
'•"Very plain, practjcal sermons, which it is at once a pleasure and a profit to read.
Thoroughly evangelistic, they are yet eminently adapted to the needs and cares of the
every-day man."— The Churchman.
THE ORACLES OF PAPIAS.
The Oracles Ascribed to Matthew by Papias of Hier-
apolis : A Contribution to the Criticism of the New Testa-
ment. With Appendices on the Authorship of the De Vita
Contemplativa, the Date of the Crucifixion, and the Date
of the Martyrdom of Polycarp. Crown 8vo, $2.00.
CANON AND MRS. S. A. BARNETT.
Practicable Socialism : Essays on Social Reform. By the
Rev. Canon and Mrs. S. A. Barnett. New and Enlarged
Edition. Crown 8vo, §1.50.
" These papers are really practical and helpful in their suggestions to people who
want to do something to help the poor." — Scotsman,
" In republishing these essays it is not too much to say that the authors have made
societv deeply their debtors. . . . Every social reformer will be the better for the
perusal of thi's book."— Daily Telegraph.
" It is a very practical and admirable work and still timely and appropriate. We
value this volume the more highly because while quite as practical and suggestive as
any other, it is pervaded by a decided and helpful Christian spirit and tone."
— BOSTO.N CONGREGATIONALIST.
REV. F. W. PULLER, M.A.
The Primitive Saints and the See of Rome. By
F. W. Puller, M. A., Mission Priest of the Society of St.
John the Evangelist, Cowley, Oxford. Crown 8vo, $2.25.
" Our earnest recommendation of this book can be best emphasized by the eulogy'
which the Bishop of Lincoln pronounces — and no one could be fitter to pronounce it
— on ' the brilliancv of the Christian spirit which runs through it all.' "
—Guardian, London.
" An excellent compendium for American churchm.en now, when the Roman
question has taken a new turn in this country ... no one can afford to despise
a carefully digested manual like this." — The Churchm.en, New York.
LO.VGMAXS, GREEA\ cr= CO:S RECENT PUBLICA TIONS.
NEW BOOK BY A. K. H. B.
St. Andrews and Elsewhere : Glimpses of Some Gone
and of Things Left. By A. K. H. Boyd, D.D., LL.D.,
First Minister of St. Andrews ; Author of " Recreations of
a Country Parson," "Twenty-five Years of St. Andrews,"
etc. 8vo, $4.00.
"This volume has one serious fault. It is too full of good stories. . . . The
truth is that this is a very enjoyable volume, and the author himself is always a source
of delight." — North British Daily Mail.
" In the present book will be found a series of reminiscences of Dean Stanlev,
of Canon Hugh Pearson, and of Mr. Froude. There are plenty of anecdotes about
all three — some racy enough." — Times.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
Twenty-five Years of St. Andrews, 1865 to 1890.
2 vols., 8vo. Vol. I. 1867-1878, $3.00. Vol. II. 1878-
1890, $3.00.
" These reminiscences are so unique that one can hardly place them. They present
Dr. Boyd's social life and, to some degree, his personality in a very strong light. They
contain something characteristic of nearly everybody. The pages are full of bright
and entertaining matter. . . . We are certain that not since Boswell's ' Life of
Dr. Johnson,' has a more entertaining book of notable sketches and conversations
been written.
These volumes will have a permanent interest for all who have a desire to know
something about many of the most notable persons in England and Scotlatid during
the last half of the nineteenth century."— The Outlook.
REV. H. E. HALL, M.A.
Manual of Christian Doctrine. Chiefly intended for
Confirmation Classes. By the Rev. H. E. Hall, M.A.,
Vicar of S. Benet and All Saints', Kentish Town, N.W. ;
Author of " Leadership not Lordship," "The Ritualists and
the Reformation." With a Preface by the Rev. W. H.
Hutchings, M.A., Rector of Kirby Misperton, and Rural
Dean. Fcap. 8vo, 80 pages, 30 cents.
This manual aims at helping the teacher as well as the taught, and is therefore
of a more distinctly theological character than many of a similar knid that are already
in existence.
Tlie author interprets the Praver Book in the light of Catholic Truth, taking
antiquitv and not noveltv for his guide. He adheres to the traditional teaching oJ
Western Christendom, and is careful, in exalting the gift of Confirmation, not to
depreciate that of Baptism. He is alive, too, to the practical advantage of separating
the period of life for the reception of Confirmation from that of the initial Sacrament,
\'\ order that fresh grace and strength may be vouchsafed to the young, just before
they have to meet new temptations and to go forth into the world.
Although the manual is cspeciallv intended as a help in giving Confirmation
classes, much of it may have a wider use, either as the basis of a series of instructions,
>r for catechising in church and in the schools.
12
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