The mind of Christ the perfection and bond of the church : a sermon preached at St. Peter's Church, Brighton, before the Right Reverend Philip Nicholas, Lord Bishop of Chichester, at a meeting of the diocese, December 9, 1841

m

I

Jill MIND OF CHRIST THE PERFECTION AND
BOND OF THE CHURCH.

A SERMON

PREACHED AT ST. PETER'S CHURCH, BRIGHTON,

BEFORE THE RIGHT REVEREND

PHILIP NICHOLAS

LORD BISHOP OF CIIICHESTER.
AT A MEETING OF THE DIOCESE,

December 9, 1841,

BY HENRY EDWARD MANNING, M. A.

ARCHDEACON GF CHICHESTER.

}pnntcti fm Bequest.

( IIICIIE>TER:
WILLIAM IIAYLEY MASON, EAST STREET.

1841.

TO THE RIGHT REVEREND FATHER IN GOD
PHILIP NICHOLAS

LORD BISHOP OF CHICHESTER

AND TO THE CLERGY AND LAITY OF THE DIOCESE

THIS SERMON

WITH AN EARNEST DESIRE AND PRAYER

THAT THE PRECIOUS OINTMENT OF HOLINESS AND UNITY
FROM OUR GREAT AND ONLY HIGH PRIEST

MAY EVER DESCEND UPON US
IS INSCRIBED BY THEIR FAITHFUL SERVANT

H. E. M.

A SERMON,

Philippians, ii. 5. "Let this mind be in you, which was also irc
Christ Jesus."

ST. PAUL here sets before the church in Philippi
the self-abasement of the Son of God. Hebids them,
that had been born again through the incarnation
of Christ, to follow in His steps. " Be ye minded
even as Christ Jesus." The Apostle then dwells on
the mystery of His unutterable humiliation, who,
being in the form of God, and co-equal with God
unclothed Himself of His eternal glory, and took
upon Him the weeds of our fallen manhood, and
became a servant, being made in the likeness of
man. And, even in this humiliation, He yet fur-
ther abased Himself, and, being found in fashion as
a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient
unto death. He, that was impassible as God, was
made flesh, that He might suffer as a man. He
would even take another nature, that He might
bring Himself down within the reach of sorrows,
ivhich were as far from His eternal Godhead as the

B

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sins for which He died. And even lower still — in the
body of His humiliation He chose to die a death
beyond all others in shame and agony, even the
death of the Cross.

In this unutterable self-abasement, and in this
transcendent self-oblation, fSt. Paul teaches us to see
the divine ideas of all earthly forms of lowliness, and
self-denial. Whatsoever there is of pure humility
and painful self-devotion upon earth is the reflection
and the impress of these heavenly realities which
were in Christ Jesus. The humiliation of the
Son of God taken in its moral, not its mysterious
aspect, that is, not on the side by which it manifests
itself in the world unseen as a mastery over sin
and death, but on the side which is turned on this
visible world, — is a type and a law of life given to
the church of God. The mind of Christ dwel-
ling in the faithful, is the perfection of the Saints
and the bond of unity to His mystical body. The
humiliation of the Great Head of the Church, now
exalted to the glory of His kingdom, is the pattern
in heavenly places of the new creation of God.
The mind of Christ then is the life of that great
mystery of truth and grace, which was revealed,
and shed abroad for the perfection of the faithful.
They are the true brethren of the Firstborn, who
have received upon their spiritual being the stamp
of his humiliation. Every true servant of God
from the beginning has borne these two great
tokens of his lineage, lowliness and self-devotion :

and men are Saints in the measure in which
they partake of this unearthly character. If we
look down the line of those who by sanctity of
life, have visibly handed on in the world the mys-
tery of Christ's humiliation, we shall find each one
bearing, in these particular features, the likeness of
Him who was alone a')ove the world. Whatsoever
mankind had before known of its own perfection,
whether by the yearnings of a purer wisdom, or by
the gradual revelations of God, this they had never
reached, that the perfection of man is in the abase-
ment of self, in being the last, the lowest, and the
least ; in yielding up his own, in suffering for others,
in choosing sorrow for his portion. It was a standard
and a kind of perfection beyond the thoughts of
man. And as before, the world could not reach
this mystery, so, afterwards, it could not understand
its depth. It was before a secret, it was afterwards
a miracle.

Again as the mind of Christ impressed upon his
own is the perfection of each several faithful man,
so it is the bond of Christ's mystical body, which
the Church. Throughout the whob history of
the church, we find the likeness of Christians to
their Lord, to be the living basis of Catholic unity.
One common type of moral and spiritual being
held them all in one common fellowship. They
were likeminded one with another, because all were
like their Lord. In all ages, in all lands, in all
languages, and in all diversities of outward state, in

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the churches of Asia, and Africa, in the East and
in the West, there was one common type of spiri-
tual perfection impressed on all. And that parti-
cular character is exactly such as extinguishes the
germs of strife. Lowliness and selfdenial, humili-
ty and sacrifice of self, are the natural opposities
and correctives of the tempers, out of which spring
rivalry and contention. The mind of Christ abso-
lutely subdues the rebellion of the individual will.
And, as all national diversities were lost in the one
Catholic Church, so were all oppositions of personal
character merged in the one pattern of life. They
were either blended, or destroyed. How different
soever men were before their conversion, by the
traditions of nation and home, by cast of mind, or
habits of life, as Justin and Ambrose, Vincentius and
Augustin, soldiers, statesmen, pleaders, rhetoricians,
philosophers, all were assimilated by one dominant
spiritual energy, likening them to one universal type.
They were transfigured into a form above them-
selves, and put off the partial and narrow indivi-
duality of their former character, as a part of that
death from which they were redeemed. They each
received in full the outline of that mind, which
is one in all, and in which all are one.

1 . Now upon what has been said — I would observe
first, that so long as the mind of Christ prevailed
£over the diversities of individual will and character,
the church was united. The close-knit and tena-
cious unity of early times, while the supremacy

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of this spiritual idea was strong, is proof enough.
Naturally did they liken it to the seamless coat,
which the very heathen forbore to rend. In those
days the fact of separation was proof enough that
the man was not under the dominion of the mind
of Christ. " They went out from us, but they were
not of us, for if they had been of us, they would
have continued with us : but they went out that they
might be made manifest that they were not all of
us." 1 John ii. 19.

But it was not only by freedom from internal
divisions, that the ascendency of this governing
energy was exhibited, but also in the speedy and
thorough healing of schisms which had actually
begun, as for instance in the variance which for a
time sundered the Churches of Rome and Asia,
and again of Rome and Africa. There was within
the visible unity of the church an invisible unity of
will, springing from participation in the mind of
Christ, which knit all members of the church in
one as by the pervading unity of one common life.
It was as it were the consciousness of the church,
one and indivisible. In its moral probation it was
tried oftentimes, sometimes it was at the point
of being overcome. Individual characters gained
a local and temporary ascendency and usurped
upon the sway of this divine power. The indivi-
dual antagonists met and struggled for a while,
and the schismatical tempers of man's original will
strove for division and the mastery — but after awhile

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the presiding type reasserted its supremacy and re-
duced all discordant forces into harmony, by
reducing all to its own control. This I say may be
taken generally as the key of the unity of the
church in the earlier ages of its probation The first
impression of His divine character was still vividly
retained. The original power of the great mystery
of His humiliation still governed, and subdued the
will of men. Though sins and errors gathered and
wound their way into the church, drawing after them
a trail of pride and lust, and the restless cravings
of selfwill^and the alienations of jealous and bitter
hearts, nevertheless by the space of six hundred
years, the great Catholic body in the East and West
was still united. And no other account can be
given of the unearthly sight, the visible miracle
of countless human wills held in a balance and all
their natural repulsions composed into one indis-
soluble force but this — that the visible church was
an outward sign of the invisible dominion of the
mind that was in Christ Jesus.

2. And now, if this be so, I could observe further
that the divisions of the church are a certain sign
that the antagonist powers of the individual will
have prevailed against the mind that was in Christ.
Not in isolated characters, indeed, for the Saints
of Christendom scattered through the firmament,
shine even in the darkest ages of the church with
a resplendent brightness. But from the day when
Christendom was severed in twain, it was declared

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that the supremacy of that divine character had
passed away. It retained its dominion only in
part : throughout the body of the Church the
passions and powers of individual minds pre-
vailed. Such is the history o f the division of the
East and West, and of the Western church against
itself — such also is the true cause of the inward
divisions wherewith the church in this land is, for
our sins, afflicted. From this source in all Christen-
dom arise the manifold streams of schism, each
cutting for itself a deeper channel of separation :
particular traditions of isolated churches and of in-
dividual teachers, false schemes of doctrine thrown
out by individual minds, heresies with the names
of men upon them, schisms for a vestment, or a ritual
order, false notions of the Christian character, and
of its perfect idea, lower types of sanctity, and a
lower tone of devotion even within the body of the
church : caprice, affectation, love of deviating from
common rules, the singularity of prejudiced or fanciful
or self- contemplative minds; in a word the dominion
of the subjective character of men over their views
of the objective truth and a mind of Christ. If this
should be thought a strange and bold opinion, let
it be remembered that as, from the beginning, even
in its purest days the church was as the mingled field,
and as the net wherein was every kind both good
and bad, so was it foretold that in the latter times a
falling away should come. " Because iniquity shall
abound, the love of many shall wax cold." St. Matt.

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xxii. 12. "There shall arise false Christs and false
Prophets and shall shew great signs and wonders,
insomuch that if it were possible, they shall deceive
the very elect." St. Matt. xxii. 24. " When the
Son of Man cometh shall he find faith on the earth."
St. Luke xviii. 8. And unow the Spirit speaketh
expressly that in the latter time some shall depart
from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and
doctrines of devils, speaking lies in hypocrisy, hav-
ing their conscience seared with a hot iron." 2 Tim.
iv. 1.2. " This know also, that in the last days peri-
lous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of
their ownselves, coveteous, boasters, proud, blasphe-
mers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,
without natural affection, truce-breakers, false
accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that
are good. Traitors, heady, high minded, lovers of
pleasures more than lovers of God, having a form of
godliness" (else would they not be of the visible
church) "but denying the power thereof." 2 Tim. iii.
1,2, 3, 4. What do we learn from all these passages
of holy writ, but that there should be a declension
from the mind of Christ, and that there should grow
up and overpower the first supremacy of that divine
example, the selfish and heady tempers of man's
original heart ? what but that the miracle of unity
should fall back again into its earthly elements, and
the visible church, though the true church still,
yet linger on in the world shorn of its transient
glory even as its Great Head in the days of his flesh

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-ed again from the brightness of the transfigura-
tion, to be once more despised, and rejected of men.

3. It follows then most plainly from all that I have
slid that if sanctity and unity are ever to be restored
to the church on earth it must be by restoring
the mind which was in Christ Jesus to its ascen-
dency over the manifold and conflicting forms of
individual will ; or in other words, forasmuch as all
broad and extended movements to this end must be
begun and guided by those to whom the Head of
the Church has entrusted the government of His
visible kingdom, I will say that this restoration must
be wrought out by our submitting, each one of us,
our own will to be conformed to that heavenly type.
It is neither meet nor right for us, at least now, to
dwell on any points either in the external order, or
in the administration of the Church, which we may
believe to be wanting, or mutilated, or paralysed,
so as to become obstructions to a higher theory and
a more devoted practice of holy living. Of this at
a fit time much may be said, but we are now con-
cerned with what is personal and particular. And as
I have no intention to touch on these general points in
the system of the Church, so neither shall I presume
to use any general exhortations to greater holiness of
life. My aim is of a more direct and definite sort.
My intention is to note one or two particular excesses
of the individual character prevalent in these times of
the church, which, as they are most antagonist to the
mind that was in Christ Jesus, so they must needs

14

be absolutely and first of all subjugated to His
example.

And first I will take as an instance a spurious
individuality of character, which consists not in the
boldly pronounced features of an energetic life, but
only in an unconscious, or if conscious, in a blame-
able inconformity to any external rule.

Let me not be thought to commend a weak and
characterless devotion, which is made up of feelings
and contemplation, and ends in repressed energies,
and an enfeebled will. The most masculine and
dominant characters the world has ever seen, were
those whose manhood was developed and carried up
to the highest pitch under the supreme rule of the
mind of Christ, which governed and unfolded their
whole being. In this common bond they all were
one, but in that which belonged to each, as a several
creature of God wonderfully and fearfully made
according to the mysterious variety of His manifold
wisdom, they had each a character as broad and
incommunicably distinct as Peter, John and Paul.
The very cause of their true individuality was
their subjection to one external type. And the
consequence of the false individuality of these latter
days is the confusion, and obliteration of definite
and intelligible character. It is in going about to
erect a standard of individuality in themselves that
men are baffled and brought to nothing. We see
every where diversity without characteristic differ-
ence. If any man want a proof of this let him

15

read the lineage of Christ's servants in earlier days,
and see how each stands out with an individuality,
lefinite and perfect as the stars of heaven. Let
him look at the magnitude of their works, at the
still unfulfilled outlines of their almost prophetic
aims, which men of these days admire without imi-
tating, and under the shadow of which they shelter
their own littleness. And if he ask the cause of this
moral dwarfishness, in one word it is this : we do
not begin by subjecting ourselves to a rule out of our-
selves as the first condition of all true energy. We
do not govern our life by a habitual gaze on a pattern
above and out of ourselves. But with much know-
ledge of truth, much devotional feeling, many high
aspirations, and a full purpose of aiming at the
loftiest mark, we unconsciously interpose the haze
of our own inward habit between the mind that was
in Christ Jesus and our own. Everything out of our-
selves is tinged, and re-shaped by the atmosphere of
a spurious individuality. So that men, who believe
all truth to be a definite revelation of God, external
to the reason of man, habitually pursue the images
of their own minds : men, who believe the Catholic
Church to be an organic, uniform, and living body,
ordained of God to shelter and guide his servants,
end in forming each man his own scheme of eccle-
siastical order, and in filling it up with the details of
his own inconsistent and irregular practice : men
who are thoroughly persuaded that they ought to
imitate the mind that was in Christ, and verily and

16

indeed believe that they are conforming themselves
to His example do habitually follow the dictates, and
bias of their individual will, and draw such por-
tions of His example, as they chiefly sympathize in
under the supreme rule of their own mind. It is
not that they are unlike Him altogether, but it is a
subordinate, and not the dominant feature of their
character. And what they thus draw to themselves
is by a counter-assimilation lowered and debased.
From all this what else should follow but diversities
and oppositions in opinion, and practice, in will and
temper ? And as the system of each man is moulded
upon himself, how should he fail to be over-fond and
tenacious of what is so peculiarly his own, and
therefore, if not contentious for its maintenance, at
least willing to acquiesce in the forfeiture of unity
which follows upon the multiplication of so many
isolated and incompatible movements within the
precinct of the Church. There is much vanity in
all this. They had rather forfeit unity than forego
their own opinions. After all what is the hidden
cause of this spurious individuality, but self-will,
and self-love ; and the worst of all idolatries, self-
worship, or in a word the direct antagonist of the
lowliness of Christ — self -exaltation.

And from this master fault arises another pecu-
liarity in the prevalent character of these days, I
mean a littleness which runs through our aims, and
works in God's service. It must be so, for the in-
dividual mind draws all things into its own cramped

and shallow measure. We no longer embrace
Christendom in our aims. Self, or our own narrow
section is the ultimate reach of most men's schemes.
They are marked too by an impatience of temper.
We cannot endure to toil for posterity,— to begin
works which we cannot live to finish. We must
see it all out in our day — and therefore our plans are
little, and our labours transitory. Here and there
indeed, God be praised, there are great and noble
works of Faith ; great when measured against the
power of this or that individual man, but small
when measured against the greatness of the Stew-
ardship entrusted to this branch of His church.
Our greatest works are not as of old the works of
one, or of a few devoted men, who denied them-
selves above measure and consecrated their whole
being to fulfil some one vast design : but a confused
result, wrought out by a combination of multitudes
so great, that hardly any one is conscious of self-
sacrifice. Our missions, our efforts to gather again
into the unity of the church our brethren of the
separation ; or to rear God's altar in the howling
waste of our spiritual wilderness, or to multiply
pastors and teachers for our own flocks, are
works wrought by a huge accumulation of petty
acts. They belong to no one, they consecrate the
memory of no one, they draw no circle of light
around the name of any, who, in the story of the
church, shall hereafter stand out in the greatness
and the glory of those that have stamped the outline

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of their life upon some enduring work of love. And
as our greater and more public works are so wrought
as to demand little or no self-denial of each several
agent, so are the private schemes which grow up in
the individual mind dwarfed and stunted under the
chilling shadow of these greater systems. They give
the key-note to our private life : and hence come
the strangely narrow schemes of benevolence we
daily see even in good men, and the narrower ways
of effecting them : hence comes the timid shrinking
from aims of a bolder and broader cast, for »he self
indulgent mind has a shrewd sensitiveness, amount-
ing almost to an instinct, by which it detects the ap-
proach of difficulty and self-denial as the inevitable
condition of success: — and hence the half-hearted
and irresolute step of those that have put their hand
upon the plough, and the quickness of eye with
which men seize on the loophole to escape from
undertakings greater than themselves, and for a
last token of littleness, the visible unconsciousness
that, by their shrinking retreat from some severer
design, they are self-proclaimed as unworthy of a
high and stirring enterprize. And yet such men
are often amiable and in the main of a religious
cast : sometimes they have gone far onward in a
life of personal religion. But for anything higher,
or broader or more energetic, or more foresighted
than their own daily schemes they have no sympa-
thy nor soul. Nay they mar greater works than
they have hearts to imagine, and like a lurking

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weakness bring on unexpected failures in the mo-
ment \ve are taxed for a greater effort. They in-
sure failure by deserving it, and they deserve it by
foreboding it. The world was never converted, the
Church was never restored by such softhearted
Christians. They live and die, and have done no-
thing.

Now what is the root of this evil but a self- sparing
temper, the direct antagonist of the self-denial of
the Son of God ? Brethren, we are poor and lag-
gard followers of Him, whom neither humiliation,
nor scorn, nor toil, nor weariness, nor want, nor
contradiction,nor ingratitude, nor false witness, nor
agony, nor the cross could turn aside, or slacken
from the work of love for which He offered Himself
to God. Surely we are fallen upon a subtle and
deceitful age. The oppressive tradition of a feebler
r.nd earthlier character, the conventional laws of
self-indulgence, the subdued unemphatic tenor of
our daily life, the mutual dispensations which
men interchange — each man with his fellow — that
none should do more for God than all needs must ;
these and unnumbered more are the seductions, by
which men are beguiled away from the sharper side
of Christ's example. A self- sparing age can have
little fellowship with the Man of Sorrows : surely it
must be an offence to Him who so keenly rebuked
the foremost Apostle, when he dared to say, " Master
spare thyself:" it must be a stumbling block to our
own souls.

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It is to these two prominent faults in the modern
character of the Church, that we may trace the for-
feiture of almost all that we have lost of unity, and
sanctity : for what is the source of all strife but
self-exaltation ; and what the withering blight of
all holier aspirations but self-sparing ? Mask it as
we may, the sin of the later church is not the wor-
ship of idols, but worse than all, two-fold more re-
fined and inveterate, the worship of self. And here
must we begin the correction, and the discipline.
We must each one submit self in all its excesses
and flatteries and refinements to a pattern and a
power out of ourselves. By no other discipline can
we grow towards perfection, by no other bond can
we become united. Even though we were united
by a miracle, we should quickly start asunder
again by the repulsion of self. We should need a
second miracle to perpetuate our unity.

This great law of our regenerate life is brought
to bear upon us with a peculiar urgency to day.
We are here gathered as a Diocesan Church,
under our visible spiritual head, supreme under our
unseen Lord ; a type of Him from whom all perfec-
tion and unity descend upon the earth. We are
here gathered as a Church, both Pastors and flock,
to bear our part in working together with Him who
for our sakes was made flesh and suffered. We are
bidden by our spiritual Ruler, to share in restor-
ing and perfecting of the church, committed to his
charge. In some way we may each one partake, in

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MHS hallowed and hallowing work : but in no way
without denying ourselves. As to the particular
acts by which we may bear our part in this manifold
undertaking, I shall now and here say nothing ;
save this only : let your first contribution to this
work, be a will subjugated to the mind of Christ,
Your offerings to day will indeed be consecrated to
the work which brings us together ; but I am not
set here to ask you for money. Base and low in-
deed are such thoughts of doing God service. We
shall never make again the heavenly tokens of one-
ness and holiness to shine forth in the Church, by
lists of subscriptions, and schemes of raising money.
Woe unto us if we are so sunk in earthy and little
thoughts. It must be wrought by personal sanctity
in self-denial ; by abasement before God ; by peni-
tence ; by a devout spirit ; by lowliness before our
fellows ; by meekness, by gentleness of heart ; by
yielding up our inferior opinions and choices ; by
searing out of our minds the susceptibility of per-
sonal offence ; by forbearance to the weakness, and
waywardness, and faults of others ; and by a calm
inflexibility in doing and suffering whatsoever may
lie between us and our fixed aim in God's service.
All other things needful will follow in our train :
they will wait on us unbidden If we have them
not of our own, they shall be rather given us by the
ministry of Angels than that the work of God
should fail.

\nd moreover, Brethren, we have, for the first

22

time, this day a most unwonted blessing. For the
first time is the Church in this Diocese bid openly to
witness to its ownunity,in the Sacrament of the Holy
Eucharist. In that blessed mystery is visibly set
before our eyes the self-abasement of the Son of God,
His holy Incarnation, His unutterable Passion, His
one atoning Sacrifice. Pray of Him so to unite us
to His glorified manhood that He may dwell in us,
subduing evermore the restless and unruly powers
of our will, and changing us into the likeness of
Himself. The trial of these latter days is coming in
full upon us. We are already caught and borne along
in the great movements which are eddying to and
fro in the earth. Day by day are we falling under the
dominion of one or other of the great spiritual antago-
nists which are ever developing into a bolder shape ;
and shall divide the earth at the last. On the one
side ruling in the world is the sovereignty of man's
fallen will : on the other hallowing the Church is f he
gentle sway of the mind that was in Christ Jesus.
There is no halting between these two great spiritual
powers : with one or with the other we must choose
our part. All things seem gathering together for
some mysterious changes in the Church of God ; for
what we know not : whether as yet the powers of
evil are making ready to go up from the breadth of
the earth to compass the camp of the Saints we
know nothing. But this we may read in the words
of the Seer, that the remnant of the Church on
which the ends of the world shall come will be a

23

narrow remnant, but it shall be united. It may
be we shall soon be sifted, but the sifting which shall
thin our fellowship, shall bring back our unity.
Of things that shall be hereafter we speak blindly.
God alone knoweth. One thing is sure, they that
bear His seal upon them shall be saved through all ;
for the bond of living unity which binds the visible
body to its unseen Head no power of hell shall
break — the mind that was in Christ Jesus.

THE END. -

William Hayley Mason, Printer, Hast Stivt. Chidiester.