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HIGH AND LOW CHURCH 
 
HIGH AND LOW 
 CHURCH 
 
 BY 
 
 LORD NORTON 
 
 SECOND EDITION 
 
 ^London 
 
 PERCIVAL & CO. 
 
 1893 
 
jV^^Tf- 
 
 A. ?6& V^ 
 
 x tr^J „ 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Definitions, . . . . . 1 
 
 History — , . 3 
 
 Councils, ... . . 5 
 
 East and West Divisions, 6 
 
 Reformation, 7 
 
 The English Church, . . 9 
 
 Two Natures of the Human Mind, . 10 
 
 Two Church Parties, 11 
 
 The Terms High and Low Church, . 13 
 
 High and Low Church tendencies balance each other, 
 
 and alternately predominate, . 14 
 
 Dissent, ... 18 
 
 Church Parties distinct from Dissenters . 21 
 
 High and Low Views of the Church — 22 
 
 Special High Church Views, 22 
 
 Special Low Church Views, . 23 
 
 Comparison of the two Views, . 24 
 
 High and Low Views of Church Ministry — . 25 
 
 Absolution, . 26 
 
 Confession, . . .27 
 
 Preaching, . ... 28 
 
 High and Low Views of Church Service— . . 29 
 
 Of Baptism, . . 29 
 
 High Church Views, . . 29 
 
 Low Church Views, ... 30 
 
 Comparison, . 31 
 
 The Lord's Supper, . 32 
 
 High Church Views, . 34 
 
 Low Church Views, 3b' 
 
 Reflections, . . . 36 
 
 Fasting Communion, 37 
 
Vlll CONTEXTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 On Fasting in General, 38 
 
 Saints' Days, 41 
 
 Ritual, . 43 
 
 Lincoln Judgment. -16 
 
 Mixed Chalice, . 46 
 
 Candles, 48 
 
 Eastward Position, 49 
 
 Agnus Dei, . 50 
 
 General Reflections, 50 
 
 The Difference of High and Low Church Views, 
 
 though not Vital, are not Unimportant, 52 
 
 Fundamental Christian Doctrine is held in Common, 54 
 The Difference of High and Low Church Views is Inseparable 
 
 from Human Nature, 57 
 
 Via Media, • 58 
 
 Christian Life is the Common Aim, 60 
 
 Prayers for Unity, . 61 
 
 High and Low Church Views may have nothing to do with 
 
 Religion, 62 
 The Mass of Christians in the World are outside any Visible Church, 64 
 
 But Voluntary Outsiders not without Guilt, . 65 
 
 Church Parties' Conflict in the presence of a Common Foe, 66 
 
 The Church, as the world widens, needs stronger Bonds of Union, 68 
 But Catholicity forbids Identity both in Corporate and Individual 
 
 Communion, . 70 
 
 True Christian Fellowship, . 71 
 
HIGH AND LOW CHURCH. 
 
 Definitions. 
 
 Want of definition is the life of all controversy: and 
 controversy is the bane of Christian spirit, of which unity 
 is the essential characteristic, and large comprehensiveness 
 the most distinguishing quality. 
 
 The following discussion relates to differences of views 
 within the Church, as to matters connected with its 
 doctrine and practice. 
 
 ' The Church,' in its widest sense, means a community 
 ' belonging to the Lord.' Such acceptation its Greek 
 etymology implies. 
 
 Within this description come all the Faithful of the 
 human race under every Divine dispensation, from that of 
 the first promise of redemption from the ' Fall ' to the 
 covenant with Abraham, and the law given on Mount Sinai, 
 up to the rising of the Light on Zion which brought man- 
 kind out of darkness to the full revelation of the Kingdom 
 of the Son of God. 
 
 The spirits of the justified in disembodied state ' wait- 
 ing for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body ' 
 (Rom. viii. 19), and the militant still in earth's probation, 
 are in this communion with The Lord, and with each 
 other, ' out of every kindred, tongue, people, and nation ' 
 (Rev. v. 9). 
 
 ' The Christian Church ' means the visible institution of 
 Christ on earth, as organised by His Apostles. This is the 
 recognised depositary of Christian doctrine, and the divinely 
 appointed channel of Christian grace. 
 
 As a visible association, it has its terms of admission 
 
DEFINITIONS 
 
 by baptism — 'we are all baptized into one body/ — its 
 badges of membership, and its accredited Ministry and 
 Services. Repentance, faith, and obedience are its vital 
 conditions, amidst much affectation of a vain profession. 
 Many professed members of the body are not of its 
 true spirit, but only formally admitted and nominally 
 enlisted in it. Many good Christians, on the other hand, 
 are of its spirit who have not been formally incorporated. 
 Some are even in avowed separation from it, and in inde- 
 pendent communities. Such may, nevertheless, be vir- 
 tually in fellowship with the mystical body of which 
 Christ is the Head — ' the blessed company of all faithful 
 people.' The Church charitably assumes all communicants 
 to be its members. No more than this is cognisable 
 to human ken. The Searcher of hearts alone discri- 
 minates the true members from the false ; and even He 
 leaves the actual severance to final issue. 
 
 Dr. Pusey thus beautifully draws this distinction: 
 ' They are members of the Soul of the Church who, though 
 not of the visible Body, unknowingly reject the ordinances 
 of Christ ; but in faith, love, and obedience cleave to Him. 
 And many members of the Body are not members of 
 the Soul of the Church, who, amid outward profession of the 
 faith, do in heart and deed deny Him whom in words they 
 worship. The promise of deliverance is for those who, in 
 the Body of the Church, belong also in faith and love to 
 the Soul, and to those who, though, not by their own fault, 
 out of the Body, belong to the Soul, cleaving to the Lord.' 
 (Minor Prophets, Joel ii. 32: 'Whosoever shall call on the 
 name of the Lord shall be delivered '). 
 
 The 19th Article defines the visible Church of Christ 
 as a congregation of faithful men, in which the pure Word 
 of God is preached, and the holy Sacraments are duly 
 administered. 
 
 The Christian Church is catholic — that is, open to all 
 and intended to embrace all, mankind. It is potentially 
 
HISTORY 
 
 the right and privilege of everybody to belong to it, and 
 none are inadmissible or aliens to it involuntarily. Christ 
 invites all to come to Him — Himself the way. All may take 
 shelter in the ' Ark of His Covenant ' from the approaching 
 deluge of this world's ungodliness. It is offered as the 
 refuge for all from a common danger, and the conductor 
 to a common destiny of redemption from it. 
 
 The English Church is a Branch of this Catholic 
 Church. It is the aggregate of all our countrymen who 
 have been baptized into it. 
 
 History. 
 
 The Jewish Church was of a single nation, selected for 
 a rallying standard from the world's confusion. It was 
 the depositary of the sacred promises of redemption to 
 mankind, from God's blessing to Abraham, to the 
 ' lively oracles ' in the wilderness, through the voices of 
 the Prophets up to John the Baptist, who heralded the 
 ' Lord Himself coming suddenly to His temple, even the 
 Messenger of the Covenant' (Malachi iii. 1). At the crisis 
 of redemption the veil of the temple was rent in twain, 
 and all men saw the mystery which from the beginning 
 ' had been hid in God ' according to the eternal purpose 
 which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord, of whom the 
 whole family in heaven and earth is named. (Eph. iii. 9). 
 When He died it was not for that nation only, but He 
 gathered together in one the children of God that were 
 scattered abroad (John xi. 52). 
 
 He had sent forth His twelve Apostles to preach His 
 Gospel first to the house of Israel ; and, after He left this 
 earth, His Spirit descended visibly on them, and every man 
 heard it in his own language. 
 
 So sprang the Christian Church from Christ Himself, 
 which His Apostles organised with constituted Ministry, 
 Ordinances, and the divinely ordained Sacraments ; and 
 thousands rapidly came into their fellowship. 
 
HISTORY 
 
 At first it formed itself in separate societies located in 
 every place of the Apostles' operations. Each such society 
 was called a church, even if consisting of one household only: 
 and the aggregate was called the Church of Christ. So it 
 was said that ' prayers were made for Peter by the Church ; ' 
 and in another place the Apostles were ' brought on their 
 way by the Church ; ' and the word ' church ' occurs in both 
 senses where it is said that ' it pleased the Apostles and 
 Elders, with the whole Church, to send chosen men to the 
 church at Antioch.' 
 
 Epistles were written to the church at Corinth, and to 
 the church of Galatia, and to the church of the Thessa- 
 lonians ; and the Revelation of Christ by St. John to the 
 seven churches of Asia. As the Apostles went through the 
 cities they delivered them the decrees for to keep that were 
 ordained in Jerusalem, and so were the churches established 
 in the faith, and increased in number daily (Acts xvi. 5). 
 
 They became gradually collected into dioceses under 
 Bishops, and afterwards were grouped in provincial areas 
 under Patriarchs. James was the first Bishop of Jerusalem, 
 Timothy of Ephesus, Titus of Crete. 
 
 There was no supremacy among the Apostles nor among 
 the churches. Christendom never was an earthly mon- 
 archy, Christ alone being the Universal Head. The 
 Apostolic Council at Jerusalem, over which St. James 
 presided, became naturally the seat of advice and 
 reference. Jewish Christians were, in fact, for a time, under 
 a double system. St. Paul had care of all the churches, 
 and was specially the Apostle of the Gentiles, as St. Peter 
 was of the Jews. St. Paul once rebuked St. Peter for 
 compelling Gentiles to live as Jews ; but in his contention 
 with Barnabas, who was not one of the twelve, he had 
 no power to decide, but separated himself. 
 
 In spite of bitter hostility from without, and false 
 brethren within, the Church wonderfully preserved, even in 
 its first scattered state, without any coercive authority, 
 
HISTORY 5 
 
 unanimity in the Apostolic doctrine and fellowship. 
 Nothing short of Divine superintendence can account for 
 this. The churches thus became independent witnesses to 
 the truth. The sustained identity of their Articles of Faith, 
 and their uniformity of practice, gave most striking proof 
 to all the world of common origin, and of communion with 
 one Spirit and one Lord who had promised to be with 
 them always — though unseen — to the end. 
 
 This is the real unity of the Christian Church visible 
 on earth. 
 
 The ramifications from the sacred stem, breaking out 
 in solitary shoots at first, soon spreading in large branches 
 throughout the world, constitute the Church's catholicity. 
 The supposition of a leadership in any branch is a denial 
 of the central stem, and a confusion of view which has 
 misled even great minds to wander in the search for 
 a vain ideal of unity. 
 
 The destruction of Jerusalem so soon after our Lord's 
 Ascension prevented any habit of reference for counsel from 
 growing into a feeling of dependence on central authority 
 (Bishop Fitzgerald's Lectures). Catholicity is an antithesis 
 to centralisation in the idea of the Christian Church. 
 
 The break-up of Jewish Polity synchronised with Gen- 
 tile intercommunication, and the promulgation of universal 
 Christianity. The everlasting Kingdom was then set up 
 which was prophesied by Daniel (vii. 14), and the entrance 
 to which, through repentance and faith, was preached 
 by the Forerunner's voice, and then by Christ Himself. 
 Then began what will ultimately become the Church 
 triumphant in heaven : a great multitude which no man 
 can number, of all nations (Kev. vii. 9.) 
 
 Councils. 
 
 The conferences of the Apostles and Elders under the 
 guidance of the Holy Ghost (Acts xv. 28) were followed by 
 ' Oecumenical Councils ' and Provincial Episcopal Synods. 
 
6 EAST AND WEST DIVISIONS 
 
 The first (Ecumenical Council was held at Nice, a.d. 325, 
 to adjudicate on the Arian heresy concerning our Lord's 
 Divinity. 
 
 There were only six such Councils of the whole 
 Church. 
 
 East and West Divisions. 
 
 When the centre of empire removed to Constantinople 
 the Church got divided East and West. 
 
 The Bishop of Rome then asserted a supremacy over the 
 Western Church ; and the Council of Chalcedon confirmed 
 the jurisdiction of the See of Constantinople. 
 
 There was however in this division no Schism of 
 the Body. The Greek and Latin Churches were two 
 groups, both in the communion of the Catholic Church 
 (W. Palmer, Church, i. 153). The Council held at Con- 
 stantinople, a.d. 864, was recognised by both East and 
 West as oecumenical. 
 
 The Eastern Church inclined most to speculative theo- 
 logy, and was specially called ' Orthodox ; ' while the 
 Western assumed the title of ' Catholic,' and evinced the 
 Roman turn for government and empire. Hce tibi erunt 
 artes. 
 
 The Greek and Roman faculties have always contrasted 
 each other in their respective absence and possession of 
 administrative power; and so, in the two Churches, the spirit 
 of doctrinal controversy and that of ceremonial discipline 
 have respectively prevailed. Talleyrand quotes Napoleon 
 to have said, in conversation on the principal efforts of the 
 human mind, ' Le developpement rapide du Christianisme 
 avait opere une reaction admirable de l'esprit grec contre 
 l'esprit romain. La Grece vaincue par la force physique 
 s'occupait de la conquete de l'empire intellectuel qu'elle 
 avait effective en saisissant le germe bienfaiteur qui a eu 
 tant d'influence sur l'humanite entiere ' (Memoire, i. 435). 
 
 The Eastern Church became the asylum of theological 
 learning while barbarians were ravaging the West ; and 
 
REFORMATION 7 
 
 afterwards the Latin Church became the great scene of 
 political and ecclesiastical power throughout the world. 
 
 Constantine's establishment of Christianity, and the 
 removal of empire, gave the Bishop of Rome Western pre- 
 eminence, civil and ecclesiastical ; and the Augustine 
 theology, derived from Africa, characterised the Romish 
 Church with what is called Sacerdotalism. 
 
 The Councils of the fourth century, however, show (to 
 quote words of Mr. Gladstone in his review of Ecce Homo) 
 that ' after many a fearful reel, a nearly unanimous Chris- 
 tendom settled down upon a centre of gravity in doctrinal 
 expression which has been stable through the vicissitudes of 
 1500 years; and which to all appearance nothing can now 
 shake, unless there comes a shock under which all definite 
 Christianity should crumble. The combined belief in the 
 divinity and humanity of Christ has survived the strain of 
 all the convulsive forces which rent East from West, and 
 which then broke off from the great Western map so many 
 integral parts of its articulated structure, and which have 
 disorganised so much of what they did not actually sever.' 
 
 Reformation. 
 
 The union of temporal and spiritual power in the 
 Pope led to mischief in the Western Church. St. 
 Bernard, its most zealous defender, deplored the grow- 
 ing corruptions, a.d. 1100, and asked, ' Is it devotion 
 that now wears out the Apostolical threshold, or is it 
 ambition ? The unsavoury contagion spreads throughout 
 the Church. The ministers of Christ are the servants 
 of Antichrist.' What he stigmatised as meretricious splen- 
 dour, and the abuses of exemptions and indulgences, and 
 all the corruptions of superstition and idolatry, culminated 
 in the convulsions of the fifteenth century, and precipitated 
 the Reformation. 
 
 Bishop Creighton observes of this great and wide reaction, 
 that ' it was not one definite event, but a slowly gathered 
 
8 REFORMATION. 
 
 result. The Papal autocracy gave way to new conceptions, 
 political, intellectual, and religious ' {History of the Papacy). 
 Politically viewed, it was an assertion of State independ- 
 ence against Church claims of supremacy. It was a joint 
 protest against usurpation and corruption. 
 
 England was the first country to show a spirit of 
 national resistance to foreign interference, combined with 
 the protest against ecclesiastical and religious corruption. 
 When Henry vm. was invited to head the League for 
 the Confession of Augsburg he was bent on his private 
 quarrel with Leo, which so fortunately gave this nation 
 their opportunity to acquire the emancipation they had 
 long been struggling for. No sooner, indeed, had the King 
 achieved his own private object, than he made clear his 
 distinction between its religious and political aspects. As 
 ' Defender of the Faith ' he promulgated the ' Six Articles,' 
 which vindicated, under frightful penalties, the worst cor- 
 ruptions of Rome, while he was renouncing its jurisdic- 
 tion. 
 
 Europe became divided between adherents and abhor- 
 rents of Papal supremacy. The former were chiefly nation- 
 alities of the warmer Celtic and Italian blood ; the latter, 
 of the colder German and Teutonic race : the two being 
 distinguished by their dispositions, in matter of religion, 
 either by an excess of superstition, or of rationalism. 
 
 Elaborate ecclesiasticism, and a frigid simplicity, were 
 the respective characteristics of the two religious systems. 
 ' It became,' says Dr. Vaughan {Revolution, iii. 3), ' the 
 resolve of the Teutonic races, and especially of Englishmen, 
 that their religion should no longer be something external 
 and artificial, but something inward and real.' 
 
 The admixture of Celtic, Saxon, and Norman blood in 
 English veins gave both sternness and fervour to the 
 religious revolution in this country. This mixture of race 
 gave a peculiar turn to the struggle of the sixteenth 
 century in England. 
 
THE ENGLISH CHURCH 
 
 The English Church. 
 
 So issued the independent English branch of the Catholic 
 Church, with its own canons, jurisdiction, and rights ; and 
 recognising the king as its supreme earthly head. 
 
 ' The privileges of the Clergy,' says Blackstone, ' were 
 necessarily abridged by the Reformation, owing to the ill 
 use made of them by the Popish priests.' The laws of 
 England were the last appeal in all ecclesiastical causes. 
 The Church in England is no imperium in imperio ; and 
 its self-legislation, like the bye-laws of any corporation, 
 must submit to the surveillance of the supreme tribunal, 
 to keep it within its authorised limits, and to its letter. 
 
 Dr. Pusey describes the English Church, which was origin- 
 ally Greek, as ' having assumed, after the Roman mission 
 of Augustine, a Latin character, and so embracing in its 
 authoritative recognition the Fathers of both Eastern 
 and Western Churches.' It is the folly of many to talk 
 of circumstantial phases of the Christian Church as of 
 different religions. The Reformation introduced no new 
 faith, though the blindness of controversy ignored the 
 common ground of Christianity, which remained unaffected 
 by it. 
 
 The old British Church, of still older Irish lineage, when 
 retrieved by Romish Mission from temporary wreck under 
 Saxon heathendom, fell under the ill effects of Romish 
 domination, and recovered at the Reformation its pristine 
 purity. 
 
 Pope Gregory in his celebrated colloquy with Augustine 
 recognised its proper claim to independence, which for 
 centuries it failed to realise. 
 
 In the revision of its Liturgy at the Reformation, nothing 
 appears more clearly than the careful separation of Romish 
 adjuncts from the original purely scriptural doctrine, and 
 the desire to make no needless alteration. The difference 
 
10 TWO NATURES OF THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 between the English Prayer-Book and Romish Missal is 
 the absence of special dogma imposed on-original simplicity. 
 
 Two natures of the human mind. 
 
 There are two different kinds of mental constitution, 
 which see all things differently ; one in an objective, the 
 other in a subjective, point of view. 
 
 The different tendencies are as remarkable individually 
 as corporately. Arnold observed ' an element in human 
 nature, which in religion, in philosophy, and in literature, 
 assumes in each a different form.' He thought it ' an error 
 to suppose that either of the two tendencies so affect- 
 ing the course of human affairs was simply good or bad. 
 Each had its good and evil intermingled. Trace them 
 from their highest springs ; on one side are ideas of truth 
 and justice; on the other, of beauty and love' (Christian 
 Life, Introd. iv, 3rd ed.). They are the formalistic 
 and aesthetic characteristics of mankind. 
 
 Macaulay says of the two great parties which have 
 governed this country : ' The distinction has its origin in 
 diversities of temper, of understanding, and of interest 
 which are found in all societies, and will be found till the 
 human mind ceases to be drawn in opposite directions by 
 the charm of habit or of novelty ; by zeal for authority and 
 antiquity, or for liberty and progress ' (Hist, vol. i. p. 98, 
 2nd edit.). 
 
 The one class of minds naturally looks to external order 
 and prescription for a test of right and wrong ; the other 
 looks inwardly for the impression felt. The one is sub- 
 missive to authority, the other appeals to private judgment. 
 
 In politics the one class are Tory, the other "Whig ; in 
 philosophy the one loves formularies, the other theory, 
 preferring, respectively, the analytic and inductive process; 
 in literature they are classical or utilitarian ; in religion 
 ceremonial or emotional. 
 
TWO CHURCH PARTIES 11 
 
 At the bottom of all government, says Hallam, are two 
 principles, stability and experiment. These two tendencies 
 are, in the whole field of thought and action, ancillary 
 and not antagonistic to each other. The world could ..not 
 go on without both, as the planets are only kept in their 
 orbits by the co-operation of centripetal and centrifugal 
 forces. They may mingle in the same man, and men of each 
 disposition often unite together in heart, and interchange 
 their views. The same mind becomes variously affected 
 by these two tendencies in different moods or circum- 
 stances. 
 
 Two Ohurch Parties. 
 
 When the Western Church was aspiring to universal 
 rule, with demonstration of power and authority, and the 
 Eastern turned more to theological speculation, the world 
 ecclesiastic became accordingly divided by these two leading 
 tendencies. At the Western Reformation the Papal grasp 
 retained to itself those most amenable to established 
 authority, and lost its hold on those who claimed liberty 
 of thought. 
 
 The emancipated English Church found its members 
 alike divided, as either of greater devotion to the concrete 
 institution, or of more abstract yearning after the free spirit 
 animating it. The long and bitter struggle of the Reforma- 
 tion exaggerated the idea of hostility between the two. 
 
 The dingers to the old Papal system as of established 
 authority, and the more eager for its reform and purifica- 
 tion, arranged themselves in opposite camps, and fought 
 with such blinding fury as to lose sight of the large com- 
 mon ground remaining in participation between them. 
 
 Nothing shows more strikingly the intensity of this 
 struggle than the retention to this day of the title of ' Pro- 
 testant' by the freer side — as if a protest against abuse 
 could be the permanent characteristic of any institution. It 
 may be said that the exclusive appropriation of the title of 
 
12 TWO CHURCH PARTIES 
 
 ' Catholic ' is an equal misnomer on the other side, exclu- 
 sion being inconsistent with pretensions of universality. 
 
 The adherents of Kome and the champions of Reforma- 
 tion acquired in this country more significantly distinctive 
 appellations as Romanist and Puritan. 
 
 Politically, the two parties were Royalist and Republican. 
 In matter of Church government, they were Episcopalian 
 and Independent. The battle-cry of the one was 'King 
 and Prelacy ; ' and of the other ' Parliament,' and ' No 
 Popery.' In Milton's immortal prose works there is 
 the most eloquent retort of ' Eikonoklastes ' to ' Eikon 
 Basilike,' and the fullest expression of hatred to Prelacy. 
 Authority and Liberty were the essentially conflicting 
 principles throughout. 
 
 On Queen Mary's temporary re-establishment of Popery 
 in England, and enforcement of penal laws against 
 Reformers, many fled to Switzerland to nourish there the 
 opposite intolerance. 
 
 Elizabeth, restoring the Reformed Church, found, accord- 
 ing to Neal's description (Hist, of Puritans, Pref. iv), ' a 
 fresh division within — some for keeping to the liturgy of 
 King Edward, others for the fullest liberty to shake off all 
 remains of 'Antichrist.' 
 
 Alexander Knox, whom Macaulay describes as ' a 
 remarkable man, of great influence, of the school of Calvin, 
 united with the theology of Arminius,' distinguishes the 
 Lutheran and Calvinistic branches of the Reformed Church 
 as representing respectively the Greek and Latin minds ; 
 the one bearing away from the dogmatism of Augustine to 
 the liberality of Chrysostom, the other more exclusively 
 narrowing to a system of their own. 
 
 The language of our Articles seems aimed to unite the 
 theology of Luther and Melanchthon with the piety of the 
 Primitive Church retained in our Liturgy. 
 
 In political, ecclesiastical, and doctrinal aspects, Church 
 parties always tend to divide in the two directions — to 
 
THE TERMS HIGH AND LOW CHURCH 13 
 
 prescription or eclecticism. The third Church party, often 
 cited, is only an intervention between these two — a broad 
 neutrality of any special predilection. 
 
 The terms High and Low Church. 
 
 The Nonjurors at the Revolution were the first designated 
 as High Church. Rather than renounce their oath of 
 allegiance they refused to resume the benefices from which 
 they had been ousted. They belong distinctly to the first 
 of the two parties just described, representing, in relation 
 to the Church, the conscientious adherence to authority 
 against any counter claim of expediency, — the principle of 
 allegiance against that of option of service. 
 
 Hallam describes ' the distinction of High and Low 
 churchmen about the end of William iii.'s reign, as the 
 first being distinguished by great pretensions to sacer- 
 dotal power, both spiritual and temporal, by a repugnance 
 to toleration and by a firm adherence to the Tory principle 
 in the State — the latter by the opposite characteristics ; and 
 the two pitched against each other in the two houses of 
 convocation ' (Constitutional History, iii. 323, 3rd ed.). 
 
 The Low Church are described by Macaulay, with less im- 
 partiality, in contrast with the Nonjurors, as ' men who 
 thought that to entitle a government to allegiance some- 
 thing more was necessary than mere legitimacy, or even 
 actual possession. In their view,' he says, ' the end of all 
 government w&s the happiness of society.' The Nonjurors 
 he accuses of ' sacrificing liberty to order, and order to a 
 superstition as stupid and degrading as the Egyptian 
 worship of cats and onions.' He only allows that the Low 
 Church party was fairly called latitudinarian, just as some 
 of the Jacobites were distinguished as non-compounders 
 (Macaulay, iii. 469). 
 
 Lord Grimthorpe has lately described the High Church 
 party as those ' who from the first have tried to overthrow 
 
14 HIGH AND LOW CHURCH TENDENCIES 
 
 the Reformation and to restore Papacy in England.' He 
 sympathises with the desire expressed by Disraeli for ' some 
 middle term — some standpoint between implicit faith and 
 freethought — an escape for civilisation from the opposing 
 dangers of sacerdotalism and atheism.' Such was the 
 alternative in his view. 
 
 The terms High and Low Church have been found 
 sufficiently appropriate, to distinguish the two prevalent 
 characteristics of men's minds in application to these great 
 interests, to be retained ever since, through ever-changing 
 circumstances. Certainly, neither time nor subject can 
 confuse the two ideas of fealty with volunteer, or of 
 obedience with inclination and self-will. 
 
 High and Low Church Tendencies balance each 
 other, and alternately predominate. 
 
 That would not be a national church in a free country 
 which did not comprise men of both diversities of mental 
 disposition. 
 
 The two propensities balance one another; and the 
 vicissitudes of circumstance lead to their alternately 
 predominating, and, in vigorous action, reaching the op- 
 posite extremes from the common centre. 
 
 As a pendulum in free motion swings throughout its 
 range of oscillation from the basis of gravitation, where 
 only restraint or stagnation causes rest, so does the mind 
 of a free people follow recurrent impulses to and from an 
 established basis, redressing action in opposite directions 
 under the central attraction of their coincident loyalty. 
 
 In English Church history this alternation is remark- 
 able. The popular spirit resists, and then recovers itself, 
 then sways another way, and lulls again — 
 
 ' Maria alta tumescunt, 
 Rursusque in se ipsa residunt. ' 
 
 The first struggle for emancipation from the Papal 
 incubus was checked for a time, the Court and Parliament 
 
BALANCE EACH OTHER 15 
 
 uniting, by the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity, to 
 maintain ecclesiastical authority. To ridicule reformers 
 and to preach the divine right of kings became the surest 
 way to Church preferment. 
 
 But both Church and People soon remonstrated, the 
 one crying Erastianism, the other Tyranny. None were 
 pleased, and the persecuting spirit of State-Catholicism 
 bred not only recalcitrant Protestantism but disloyalty 
 also to the Crown. 
 
 The Reformation spirit prevailed, though the Pro- 
 testants were divided between moderate reformers attached 
 to the Church, and wholesale denouncers of clerical abuses 
 — all, however, utterly disclaiming any imputation of 
 schism. 
 
 The Puritans, getting ascendency, tried to impose the 
 Covenant on the Anglican Ministry, and a Presbyterian 
 Parliament insisted on conformity with their more exag- 
 gerated views, and slew the King. They had then their 
 full swing till the very agency of independence itself 
 became a tyranny, and by another reaction the Church 
 and King recovered liberty. 
 
 The Restoration set up again the principles of loyalty, 
 with the agreement of Convocation and acceptance of 
 Parliament. The first Restoration-Parliament imposed on 
 all its members, as a test, the reception of the Sacrament, 
 and burnt the ' Solemn League and Covenant.' Charles was 
 forced to repeal the Declaration of Indulgence, and the 
 Test Act was passed. 
 
 In vain the Savoy Conference attempted compromise 
 between Anglicans and Presbyterians, though their dispute 
 regarded no vital doctrine, but only principles of government. 
 
 James n. conceived the possible restoration of Popery, 
 but the prevailing national antipathy overpoweringly 
 asserted itself against him. 
 
 William attempted schemes for religious comprehen- 
 sion. The Revolution is described by Hallam (iii. 231) as the 
 
16 HIGH AND LOW CHURCH TENDENCIES 
 
 euthanasia of religious liberty. The Act of Toleration 
 indeed passed, but strife continued till the lethargy caused 
 by interminable contention endangered the very life of 
 Christianity. 
 
 Exhaustion followed on spasmodic controversy, and 
 the eighteenth century is considered the period of the 
 Church's lowest condition in this country — a deadly lull 
 of strife. In that dark time of slumber came forth the 
 spectres of infidelity, and false lights flickered over the 
 stagnant elements. 
 
 Towards the close of the century came the 'Evan- 
 gelical' revival, but its unregulated zeal broke into 
 dissension and separations. It was however a great 
 religious movement — a reflux of the tide of life from 
 the lowest ebb, and a warm and genial flow. Such 
 gatherings of Church communion as included men like 
 Wilberforce, Gisborne, Thornton, and kindred spirits, 
 were a great refreshment of higher feeling in this 
 country. It was a Low Church swing of the pendulum. 
 Their metier was not for restoration of forms and 
 ceremonial. They were not the men for reconstruction 
 of machinery, but rather for relighting the fire which 
 had gone out, and which might again restore the motive 
 power. It was a power, indeed, rather too strong for 
 the then conditions of the Church machinery, and 
 endangered its disruption. But the ' Evangelical ' stirring 
 was far from being merely spiritual. To quote Dean 
 Church's words : ' It was especially fruitful in public 
 results. It led Howard and Elizabeth Fry to reform 
 our prisons, and Wilberforce to overthrow the slave- 
 trade ' (Oxford Movement, p. 13). The Party had sprung 
 up within the Church at a time when free thought was 
 strongly asserting itself in politics and literature, as well 
 as in relation to religion. The spirit, however, was 
 liable to evaporate, from its want of connection with 
 systematic organisation and constitutional regulation. 
 
BALANCE EACH OTHER 17 
 
 Hence the next impulse was to redress the laxity of 
 forces of self-acting Church revival. The Oxford rally, 
 in the second quarter of the century, was a return to the 
 High Church standard and pattern. The Prayer-Book was 
 the standard, and the Apostolic and Patristic tradition 
 the pattern with which all partial action was moved to 
 conform. 
 
 In the twilight of this new dawn of reviving Church 
 daylight Arnold and Whately were the first to stir. They 
 recalled the Church's claim to be ' the organised body of 
 Our Lord's institution, endowed with definite spiritual 
 powers, but no other, whether connected with the State or 
 not, having independent existence, and inalienable claims, 
 and its own objects, with its own special standard, spirit, 
 and character ' {Letters of an Episcopalian). 
 
 But the fully awakened High Churchmen took still 
 higher ground of claims for the Church, and quoted Our 
 Lord's own words, ' If any man hear not the Church, let 
 him be as a heathen : ' though the Church was not insti- 
 tuted when that was said, nor since its institution has it 
 ever excommunicated anybody except through the Courts 
 after trial. 
 
 Dean Church describes the effect of such a loud appeal 
 to Church authority as bewildering to men still in a state 
 of half sleep ; so that they indistinctly recognised, in the 
 hasty rally, what was essentially defensible, and what not. 
 He thought Arnold, who was the first to come forward, 
 took no higher stand than asserting that the Church was 
 a brotherhood of Christians, and its organisation only 
 necessary and expedient, but not of divine authority ; and 
 that its ministry was stated, but not the mode of exercising 
 it either as to persons, forms, or methods. His own idea of 
 the Church was that of the full High Church revivalists, 
 ' something very different from a State institution, claim- 
 ing an origin not short of the Apostles, and speaking 
 with their authority, and that of their Master' (Oxford 
 
18 DISSENT 
 
 Movement, p. 7). Such High Church claims re-acted to- 
 wards Popery, as the Low Church Evangelical movement 
 had wandered towards Methodism. Both extremes avoided 
 secession from the Church, and their differences were 
 rather successive phases of religious life without opposition 
 in any vital doctrine. 
 
 The Oxford impulse was an extreme High Church 
 rebound from the Evangelical swing, and Dean Church 
 (p. 337) thinks it led naturally to another turn which is 
 following now, which may be called ' Church-Liberalism.' 
 
 This he calls a new party of movement, bolder and more 
 independent, ' less inclined to put up with the traditional, 
 more searching in its methods, more daring in its criticisms, 
 larger in its sympathies, imaginative, enthusiastic, and, 
 though without much of the devotional temper, penetrated 
 by a sense of the reality of religion.' These are now the 
 democrats of Church progress, and their principle is dis- 
 tinctly one of freedom. The speculative treatment of High 
 Church tenets in Lux Munch is characteristic of this latest 
 movement. 
 
 Dissent. 
 
 Totally distinct from all these phases of what Pre- 
 bendary Curteis calls ' Church Dissension,' is the subject 
 of Dissent. 
 
 Avowed violation of the unity of the Church by sects 
 separating themselves in hostile and jealous rivalry, has 
 obviously no part in this discussion. 
 
 Such disruptions of the ' One Body into which we are 
 all baptized ' began when the Reformation seemed, to 
 shallow thinkers, a breaking up of Church authority and a 
 scramble for a new faith by every man as seemed to him 
 best. 
 
 As already stated, it was a time of shaken fealty, and 
 of desire for innovation. Great discoveries were being 
 made. The art of printing offered new facilities for 
 
DISSENT 19 
 
 intellectual communication. The schoolmaster was 
 abroad. The northern states of Europe were developing 
 freer government, serfdom was disappearing. Self-asser- 
 tion, speculation, and diffusion of knowledge strained the 
 hold of old allegiance whether in Church or State. 
 
 ' For a hundred and fifty years before Luther an inquisi- 
 tive and sectarian spirit,' says Hallam, ' began to prevail.' 
 The Eeformation, all the stronger for coming gradually, 
 separated half Europe from the Roman See. The higher 
 classes throughout England, and all classes in the north- 
 ern and western countries, clung still to Rome; but the 
 Reformers gained ground, and popular feeling soon rose 
 with violence against Church assumption. 
 
 Heresies in earlier days were adjudged by Councils. The 
 Gnostics who were lingering Judaizers, the Donatists rebels 
 against established discipline, the Pelagians and Nestorians 
 perverters of the doctrine of the Incarnation, and other 
 subtler disputants, were successively condemned. After 
 the Reformation England had her own Church documents 
 to appeal to, to which all Churchmen were in conscience, 
 if not by actual subscription, bound. Repudiation of the 
 terms of the Church was rebellion against law. But in 
 vain Elizabeth tried to enforce uniformity in practice. 
 
 The first body of Protestant Dissenters formally separat- 
 ing themselves from the English Church were the Inde- 
 pendents, called also Congregationalists. They asserted as 
 their distinctive principle a Scriptural right to complete self- 
 government in matters of religion ; throwing over all claim 
 to organic unity in the Church. From this first secession the 
 Baptists further seceded, illustrating the proverb that ' party 
 breeds party,' and exhibiting the inevitable process of dis- 
 integration following from first abandonment of corporate 
 constitution. Nonconformists fell in love with noncon- 
 formity in itself, though pronounced by Christ Himself to 
 be a primary symptom of the absence of His Spirit, and it 
 is a direct negative of His prayer that His Disciples might 
 
20 DISSEN'J 
 
 be one, as He and His Father are one. The self-asserting 
 spirit of this world develops disunion. When Stuart Mill 
 expressed a fear that uniformity might accompany the 
 growth of social equality, Macaulay likened it to a cry of 
 fire in the Deluge (Life, p. 257). 
 
 The Baptists were the next to secede from the Church 
 in the seventeenth century. Doctrine became more in- 
 volved in these later secessions. This, for instance, turned on 
 Sacramental questions, and the Church's views of means 
 of grace. London was full of Dutch Anabaptists whose 
 recent political independence led to a kindred assertion of 
 religious freedom. Baptists have a ritual of their own, and 
 actually deny the validity of our Church baptism as much 
 as Romish dissenters in England do. Spurgeon restricted 
 their terms of admission to men at years of discretion 
 only, and asserted that infants are not fit to be members, 
 though Christ said all must be converted as little children. 
 In Mr. Curteis's words, ' the Western Church was never 
 free from the persistent error of spiritualising, and 
 individualising away all the force and unity of Christ's 
 Kingdom' (Dissent, p. 221). 
 
 The Quakers followed in order of secession, from an 
 aversion to all ritual and outward expression of every kind, 
 and with an assumption of exclusive spirituality. 
 
 Unitarianism, the Socinian form of Arianism, formed 
 a schism in the Church in England in the eighteenth 
 century. Dollinger describes it as a mechanical Calvin- 
 istic conception of the Atonement, and opposing of the 
 Divine Persons (Church and Churches, p. 239). The sect 
 is more numerous in America than here, but most of the 
 old English Presbyterian congregations have fallen into 
 it. Each congregation claims uncontrolled arbitrament of 
 its own doctrine and worship, whence its very numerous 
 subsections more or less recognising the Divinity of Our 
 Lord. 
 
 Methodism towards the end of last century might 
 
DISSENT 21 
 
 have been nothing more than a new religious order within 
 the Church. But unfortunately those now calling them- 
 selves Wesleyans travesty their Founder's noble aim of 
 Church revival to what of all things he most dreaded — 
 Church disunion. His latest deed, still extant, limits his 
 Ministers' appointments to three years only unless ordained 
 in the Church ; so that most of their present appointments 
 are legally invalid. They read the same liturgy (in many 
 places), in separation without excuse. 
 
 In Cornwall, Whitfield's chief scene of operation, they 
 are scarcely separate from the Church ; but in Wales 
 ministerial jealousy, demagogue agitation, and chapel 
 shareholding have so inflamed a rival spirit against the 
 Church that they lately opposed legislation for improved 
 clergy discipline rather than let the interests of morality 
 strengthen the Church. 
 
 All sects have further dissected themselves in endless 
 fragmentation. There are Methodists of many varieties, 
 some only hiding the name of Christians under a name into 
 which they were not baptized. The main sects call them- 
 selves ' churches,' as the several branches of the Church 
 are properly called. The Church they consider a sect of 
 itself, and they consider toleration, which they certainly 
 do not mutually exercise, to mean indiscriminate impar- 
 tiality without any preference of right or wrong. Such 
 cool assumption of credit for indifference reminds one of 
 Sheridan's sarcasm on George iv.'s boast that ' He had 
 no predilections ' — 
 
 ' His heart is a sieve on which dance his affections, 
 And the finer they are the more sure to go through.' 
 
 Church Parties distinct from Dissenters. 
 
 The different views of High and Low Churchmen involve 
 no schism, nor any difference on vital doctrines of Chris- 
 tianity, such as the Divinity of Our Lord. The divisions 
 caused within the Church by different apprehension of the 
 
22 SPECIAL HIGH CHURCH VIEWS 
 
 same fundamental truths by differently constituted minds 
 come short of schism, though there is often very unchris- 
 tian exaggeration of such differences causing hostile feeling, 
 jealousies, or even mutual contempt. 
 
 That there is no vital difference of doctrine between 
 High and Low Churchmen will best be seen by comparing 
 their views about the Church itself, its Ministry, and its 
 Services. 
 
 High and Low Views of the Church. 
 
 Both parties must, in common loyalty, agree to the defini- 
 tion of the Visible Church in the Nineteenth Article, as ' a 
 congregation of faithful men in the which the pure Word of 
 God is preached, and the Sacraments are duly administered.' 
 
 And they must accept St. Paul's definition when he con- 
 trasted the true Church with the Ephesian Temple of 
 Diana, as ' The household of God, built on the foundation 
 of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being 
 the chief corner-stone.' 
 
 Special High Church Views. 
 
 The tendency of an objective apprehension is to magnify 
 the instrument of any achievement ; as, on the other hand, 
 the tendency of subjective appreciation is to immediate 
 interest in the achievement itself. 
 
 There is also a common human proclivity to deify ob- 
 jects of sense in relief of the mental effort of faith. 
 
 The typical brazen serpent drew to itself the worship 
 due to the Divine antitype. So, to some minds, the 
 Church itself becomes an object of homage — almost of 
 idolatry. Its forms and ordinances seem, to such minds, 
 not only means but ends of devotion ; and virtue is ex- 
 pected to proceed from mere performances. The Church, 
 as 'the Bride of Christ,' almost takes precedence of the 
 unseen Divinity, as a more tangible and intelligible figure 
 
OF THE CHURCH 23 
 
 for contemplation, and embodiment of worship. Such 
 worshippers answer to the prophet's simile of fishermen 
 sacrificing to their nets (Habakkuk i. 16). Any con- 
 nection of the Church with mundane institutions seems 
 to them a profane erastianism. The temporal headship 
 of the sovereign, and the submission of Church legislation 
 to civil judgment, even simply to the testing of its fidelity 
 to its own limits, seems a giving to Csesar of what belongs 
 to God. 
 
 All public religious service is, in a High Church view, 
 properly allocated to the sanctuary. For instance, the 
 daily offering of prayer in households has no such claim 
 to its observance as a call to any church though empty 
 and a mile away. 
 
 The writings of the early Church Fathers, especially of 
 Augustine's period, assume parallel authority with Scrip- 
 ture, while the Fathers of the Reformation fail to command 
 the same respect as less personating the Church. These 
 English Fathers are even accused of having tampered 
 with the Articles to compromise the genuine church with 
 pseudo-reformation. Moderate High Churchmen, as Dr. 
 Hook, indeed, properly repudiate all claims of Patristic 
 authority beyond that of contemporary evidence, such as 
 the Apostolic Fathers certainly have of primitive times; 
 but this falls short of High Church opinion. 
 
 The revelation of God, says Palmer {Church, vol. i. p. 10), 
 only offers salvation in the name of Jesus Christ in His 
 Church, and all men to whom the Gospe] is preached 
 must be members of this Church when sufficiently pro- 
 posed to them, on pain of being excluded from the favour 
 of God for ever. 
 
 Special Low Church Views. 
 Bishop Ryle, whose views may be taken as typical of the 
 best Low Church feeling, asserts that no visible church on 
 earth can call itself the one true channel of salvation, nor 
 
24 LOW CHURCH VIEWS OF THE CHURCH 
 
 assume to itself alone the true form of worship, the true 
 church government, or the true way of administering the 
 Sacraments. But for himself he says, 'In sincere loyal 
 attachment to the Church of England I yield to none. I 
 value its forms of government, its confession of faith, and 
 its mode of worship as much as any' (Knots Untied, 
 p. 268). This scarcely realises the Scriptural idea of 
 ' the one foundation.' He says, what all, in some sense, 
 agree in, ' that no church is sound in which the Bible is 
 not the standard of faith and practice.' He only pro- 
 nounces on his own judgment, that ' the Church is useful 
 as a witness, keeper, and librarian of Holy Scripture' 
 (p. 270). When he concludes that ' that is the best visible 
 church which adds most members to the invisible,' he is 
 confusing two ideas of a church. It is a mere truism to 
 say that that is the best humanly visible form in which 
 God sees most vitality, and the best outward profession 
 which has most inward reality. This is exactly the 
 characteristically subjective view, ignoring the means 
 in sole contemplation of the end. Luther exclaimed 
 against such half-conception, ' Sublime nonsense ! to disre- 
 gard means, in regard to the end. The devil roars out, 
 "Spirit! spirit!" while seeking to destroy all the roads, 
 bridges, scaling ladders, and paths by which the Spirit 
 enters.' So Liddon, the fairest of modern theologians, 
 said, 'Some men interest themselves in religion as an 
 abstract good. They declaim against churches, priesthoods, 
 fathers, creeds. The sublime essence of religion fixes their 
 enthusiasm as a matter of feeling only. The safeguards of 
 its practical power they consider productive of church 
 pedantry, the external forms of a needless apparatus of 
 scaffolding to the building' 
 
 Comparison of the Two Views. 
 
 Dean Church truly observes that ' the same necessities 
 present themselves differently to different minds, and to 
 
VIEWS OF CHURCH MINISTRY 25 
 
 the same mind with different impressions.' High and Low- 
 Church views cannot differ more widely than Newman's 
 views before and after he left the English Church for 
 Rome. He said he was attached to the one for its aposto- 
 licity, but went away to the other from an idea of its more 
 catholicity. His bosom friend Pusey was content with 
 the former. But Newman did not change his faith, nor 
 Pusey his common Christian fellowship with him. 
 
 Compare, however, the cited words of Palmer and of 
 Ryle, and widely different as the two ideas of the Church 
 are, no article of the Creed is inconsistent with either. 
 
 Bishop Pearson, commenting on the Ninth Article — 
 ' The Holy Catholic Church, and Communion of Saints ' — 
 makes its two divisions seem to represent in then colloca- 
 tion the union of the objective and subjective views of 
 the Church, as the rock-foundation and outward bulwark 
 of profession and discipline, and the inward communion 
 of true devotion which God sees now within it, and which 
 will be manifest to all in final judgment, when present 
 shadows clear away. 
 
 High and Low Views of Church Ministry. 
 
 One great distinction of the High Church is their view 
 of Apostolical Succession as a continued transmission ot 
 apostolical authority and powers ; the Low Church barely 
 recognising what Dr. Hook calls a corporate lineage of 
 Christian clergy by the consecration of bishops succeeding 
 each other from the first Apostolic ordination. 
 
 The Preface to the Ordination Service states it to be 
 evident to all readers of holy Scripture that from the 
 Apostles' time there have been three orders of ministers ; 
 bishops, priests, and deacons. 
 
 The High Church clergy magnify their office beyond a 
 ministry to somewhat of a mediatorial function, adopt- 
 ing in that sense St. Paul's expression, 'As ambassadors 
 for Christ, we pray in Christ's stead.' They consider that 
 
26 ABSOLUTION 
 
 ordination conferred on them a gift of superhuman efficacy 
 with God on man's behalf. 
 
 Absolution. 
 
 As an illustration of their views, they claim the power 
 of discerning hearts, so that on their own judgment of 
 the penitent they can pronounce or withhold absolution. 
 Our liturgy seems, indeed, to justify this assumption in 
 literal adherence to the Missal. In the Ordination Service 
 a new-made priest is told that 'Whose sins he remits 
 they are remitted, and whose sins he retains they are 
 retained.' And in the Visitation Service the priest, if 
 satisfied with confession made to him, is authorised to say, 
 ' I absolve thee.' These words, however, are shown by 
 Bingham to have been introduced into the Service-Book 
 in the thirteenth century, as a release from sentences of 
 Church excommunication after penance performed ; that is 
 to say, as a remission by the Church of what the Church 
 had imposed. He considers the words are retained in our 
 Prayer-Book in only a deprecatory sense of God's judg- 
 ment, and not as indicative of a self- asserted power of 
 judgment and absolution. 
 
 Mr. Palmer says, 'The sacerdotal benediction of penitents 
 was in the earlier times conveyed in the form of prayer 
 to God for His absolution ' (Origines Liturgicce). In our 
 Prayer-Book the context implies this limited intention. 
 Dr. Hook says, ' We do not suppose that priests can discern 
 the heart, but may only pronounce the words authorita- 
 tively in the name of God, who has committed to us the 
 ministry of reconciliation' (Church Dictionary, in loco). 
 ' The Father hath committed all judgment to the Son, 
 because He is Son of Man.' So said Our Lord. It 
 was, however, lately argued by an eminent preacher in a 
 London pulpit, that when Our Lord was proving His 
 power to forgive sins by connecting with it what the 
 people would think the greater miracle of healing, He 
 
CONFESSION 27 
 
 purposely called Himself ' the Son of Man ' to indicate 
 that such power would come within future gifts to men. 
 He even shrunk not from including the miraculous 
 powers also in the same inference. The joy given to 
 a dying sinner by a priest's absolution is taken as proof 
 of its intrinsic validity. Bishop Wordsworth, in his 
 Tour in Italy, which was undertaken with the object of 
 testing where Rome and England agreed, relates the 
 same argument being used by a Eomish priest. Carleton's 
 well-known Tales of Irish Peasantry give striking in- 
 stances of blindest confidence in priestly absolution, and 
 of wildest blasphemy where a priest dared not to pronounce 
 it. There is strong warning in Scripture against ' speaking 
 peace when there is no peace ;' and relapses from apparent 
 sick-bed penitence are proverbial. 
 
 Confession. 
 
 The High Church cling to the kindred Romish tenet 
 of auricular confession to priests ; though it is clear that 
 the ' confessions ' of the primitive Christian Church were 
 only voluntary, and mutual, ' one to another,' as recom- 
 mended by St. James. In our Communion Service advice 
 is given to ' those who cannot quiet their own consciences, 
 coming to the Lord's Table, to open their griefs to some 
 discreet minister.' Penance is a Romish ' Sacrament ; ' 
 and confession to priests is a custom in the Greek Church. 
 Our Thirteenth Canon cautions ministers how they take 
 confessions ; and when recently five hundred Anglican 
 priests petitioned Convocation ' for the regular licensing of 
 confessors,' they were answered by an unanimous Resolu- 
 tion, which was afterwards indorsed by the whole Lambeth 
 Conference of 1878, ' that the Twenty-fifth Article meant 
 no such thing.' St. Augustine asks in his Confessions, 
 What have I to do with men that they should hear my 
 confessions, as if they could heal my infirmities ? ' 
 
 The High Church idea of Church ministry, generally, 
 
28 PREACHING 
 
 assumes something more than the Apostle's definition, 
 ' Servants for Christ's sake ' (2 Cor. iv. 5). It would seem to 
 trench on the vital doctrine 'There is one Mediator between 
 God and men, the Man Christ Jesus.' But it is really only 
 an exaggerated view of the ordained human agency. The 
 Low Church err as much in the opposite direction. Com- 
 pare their views on this subject. They have their ' Penitent 
 Forms ' almost of similar intention. But Bishop Ryle sums 
 up his protest against High Church views on the subject in 
 the exclamation, 'No Priest but Christ; no Confessor but 
 Christ ; no Absolver but Christ ; ' . and of the ministry he 
 adopts St. Paul's conception, ' We preach not ourselves, but 
 Jesus the Lord.' He considers ministers as 'useful only 
 so far as they promote communion between Christ and our 
 souls, and the moment they begin to stand between the 
 two, even in the slightest degree, they become enemies, not 
 friends, to our peace ' (p. 312). 
 
 Between these exaggerated, and depreciating, views of 
 priestly agency no vital Christian doctrine is at stake. 
 
 Preaching. 
 
 The Low Church are, however, especially addicted to 
 running after favourite preachers who they feel to do them 
 spiritual good, and they run after them on the strongest 
 scent of party spirit. Each circle has its own pope, no 
 matter to what parish he may have been assigned by 
 ecclesiastical arrangement. 
 
 There is really no fundamental doctrine involved in 
 the difference of views about the preaching ministry. 
 
 The liberal High Church writers of Lux Mundi thus 
 reflect on Professor Milligan's words, ' Priestliness is the 
 prime element of the Church's being.' They say, in sub- 
 stance, Christians as a body are a royal priesthood. Christ 
 made them priests unto God His Father. Every Christian 
 gives his life to God's service, and the whole Church devotes 
 itself to the good of the whole world. Common worship 
 requires a ministry, and the Gospel must be preached. 
 
VIEWS OF CHURCH SERVICE 29 
 
 The teaching of the whole Church does not militate against 
 the special order of teachers. The Apostles were as 
 ' scribes instructed into the kingdom of heaven,' and the 
 ministers' 'lips keep knowledge' (pp. 384, 391). 
 
 There cannot be more practical evidence of the 
 essential unanimity of High and Low Church ministers 
 than the perfect co-operation of missionaries sent out by 
 the High and Low Societies, when they come together for 
 earnest work among the heathen. While the subscribers 
 to those societies at home are denouncing each other 
 at home as anti-Christian, their agents are carrying out 
 their united conflict with Antichrist, unconscious of any 
 vital difference between them. 
 
 High and Low Views of Church Service. 
 
 The crucial point on which to compare different 
 views of Church Services must be the nature of the 
 Sacraments. 
 
 To start from common ground, the Catechism defines 
 the two Sacraments — Baptism and the Lord's Supper — as 
 outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace 
 given, ordained by Christ Himself, and generally necessary 
 to salvation. 
 
 Of Baptism. 
 
 Fairly thoughtful people, of both parties, agree that 
 Our Lord referred to baptism when He said, 'Except a 
 man be born again of water and of the Spirit, he cannot 
 enter the kingdom of heaven.' High and Low views differ 
 as to the meaning and process of new birth. 
 
 High Church Views. 
 
 St. Cyril, in his allegorical manner, illustrates the 
 higher conception of baptisms to which Our Lord raised 
 carnal Nicodemus's curiosity, by the effect of ' water 
 associated with fire receiving the impress of its efficacy, 
 and so rising into higher life ' (Com. St. John, p. 169). 
 
30 LOW CHURCH VIEWS 
 
 Dr. Pusey thus simply puts the Church's doctrine in 
 contrast with Calvin's: 'Justification by faith is not 
 through feelings, but by baptism. Yet there may be a 
 cold recognition of the gift of God by baptism without 
 perception that by abiding faith only can that gift be 
 retained.' In another place he gives serious warning 
 against ' too much reliance being placed on the Ordinance 
 independently of its effects, it being the Antinomian 
 who supposes any justification by faith without good works 
 accompanying.' Hooker describes the gift in baptism to be, 
 ' a saving grace of justification, and infusion of divine 
 virtue, giving the first disposition towards future newness 
 of life : but,' says he, ' all do not receive the grace of God 
 who receive this sacrament, nor is the grace of God abso- 
 lutely tied to it.' Chrysostom says, ' Therefore we baptize 
 infants, though they have committed no sins, that holiness 
 may be added to them, and they may become Christ's 
 members so grafted into Him.' 
 
 Low Church Views. 
 
 Bishop Ryle says, ' Infants regenerated in baptism are 
 not all made holy. Such grace can only accrue in the life.' 
 He adds, 'Nothing in Scripture nor in Church Services 
 supports the idea that baptism and regeneration are 
 inseparable. Baptism is simply an Ordinance for the 
 admission of fresh members into the Visible Church of 
 Christ' (p. 160). 
 
 Mr. Simeon, a great Low Church authority, is quoted by 
 Dr. Hook with commendation as ' briefly stating the truth 
 in these words : ' The seed is sown in the heart of the 
 baptized to grow up, and bring forth fruit; so that an 
 infant thus brought within Christ's Church by the faith of 
 its parents is in a state of salvation ; and by the progres- 
 sive renovation of its gradually awakening soul after the 
 divine image it proves its inheritance of God's everlasting 
 
COMPARISON 31 
 
 kingdom. The effectiveness of the grace, if not lost, will 
 be seen by the fruits following.' 
 
 Comparison. 
 
 ' All agree that regeneration sometimes accompanies 
 baptism ' (Hooker). 
 
 The High Church take regeneration to mean a definite 
 gift of grace communicated in baptism, which, however, 
 may be lost and come to nothing. 
 
 The Low Church mean by it a new condition and 
 relation to Christ into which the infant is brought by 
 baptism, and which may or may not be realised. 
 
 There may be still-birth in grace as well as nature. On 
 the other hand God is able to give life without the ordinary 
 process, even stones as children to Abraham. 
 
 The High Church untruly accuse the Low of saying 
 that in baptism a child may, or may not, be born again ; 
 begging the question as to the meaning of the term. 
 
 The Low Church untruly accuse the High of supposing 
 a baby to be in their sense converted in heart and char- 
 acter by the act of baptism. 
 
 Both High and Low believe that an infant is introduced 
 by baptism into the household of God, the membership of 
 Christ, and an inheritance of heaven. The gift may be 
 forfeited says one, or never realised says the other — whether 
 complete or inchoate is the difference between them. 
 
 Whether the baptismal gift is affected by want of faith 
 in the parents has been decided in the negative by the 
 Church (Bingham). Archbishop Usher says, ' The Church 
 supposes parents bringing their offspring to baptism to be 
 themselves believers; and so takes the infant into the 
 Christian covenant of grace as seed of godly parents : just 
 as in the Burial Service the Church assumes, without 
 judging, that those whose bodies are brought for Christian 
 burial may be ' numbered with the elect, and rest in hope of 
 a blissful resurrection.' 
 
32 THE lord's supper 
 
 Dean Church wisely takes the exaggerations of 
 controversy as balancing opposite modes of thought : and 
 a middle term as the true place of the Sacrament of 
 baptism in the living system of the English Church 
 ( Oxford Movement, p. 228). 
 
 The Lord's Supper. 
 
 The Twenty-eighth Article describes the Lord's Supper 
 as ' not only a sign of the love that Christians ought to 
 have among themselves, but a Sacrament of our redemp- 
 tion by Christ's death, which rightly received with faith is 
 a partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ, . . . but only 
 after a heavenly and spiritual manner.' 
 
 The word ' only ' in this Article was matter of debate. 
 Our Lord, however, was very express in explaining to 
 His Disciples, who found it hard to believe that they 
 were eating His Flesh, and drinking His Blood, in His 
 Presence, at the institution of the Sacrament, that His words, 
 ' This is My Body, this is My Blood,' were spirit, and that 
 the flesh profited nothing. No doubt the Komish priests 
 have found, and still find, the supposition of their 
 miraculous function of transubstantiation very profitable 
 to their influence. But Paul was content to say, ' Though 
 we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now know we 
 Him so no more.' 
 
 It is in the literal or figurative acceptation of these words 
 that the difference of views of High and Low Church on 
 this subject consists. 
 
 It was lately argued by a correspondent with the 
 Guardian that the copula must be taken to unite two 
 identical things. That Our Lord covdd not have used so 
 graphic an expression as ' This Bread is My Flesh ' figura- 
 tively. In this view, when Paul said of the parallel Jewish 
 Sacrament, ' This Rock was Christ,' he affirmed a literal 
 transubstantiation of the source of their spiritual drinking 
 (1 Cor. x. 4). The same rule of interpretation would 
 
THE lord's supper 33 
 
 make the inspired words ' Hagar was Mount Sinai ' imply 
 Ishinael's birth from a mountain (Gal. iv. 25). St. Paul 
 followed up Our Saviour's words about the Sacrament by 
 the inference that communicants themselves are one bread, 
 being partakers of the one Bread. 
 
 Our Lord made constant use of parable in teaching: 
 ' Without a parable spake He not.' He knew how strongly 
 the oculis subjecta affect the human heart by their outward 
 illustration of hidden truths, and give sensible help to faith. 
 ' He knows how little we are able to realise heavenly and 
 spiritual things unseen, and pities our feeble apprehension ' 
 (Bishop Ken). 
 
 Not till the ninth century was the doctrine of literal 
 transubstantiation promulgated in the Romish Church. 
 Paschasius is said by Bellarmine to have been the first to 
 assert categorically that 'the consecrated bread was the 
 actual and same Body which was born of Mary.' This he 
 maintained in an argument against Bertram, who had 
 quoted the expression of St. Ambrose, ' not physical verity, 
 but spiritual mystery.' At the Fourth Vatican Council, 
 in the tenth century, Innocent the Third made literal 
 transubstantiation a Church dogma. Bossuet offered this 
 apology : ' pour oter l'horreur de manger sa chair, et de 
 boire son sang, il les donnait enveloppes sous une espece 
 etrangere.' 
 
 No wonder our Twenty-eighth Article discards such 
 fancies as ' superstition, repugnant to the words of Scrip- 
 ture, and overthrowing the nature of a sacrament.' 
 
 The Romish Mass was plainly called by Cardinal Bona 
 'the bloodless immolation;' and such meaning was as 
 plainly condemned by Cranmer as 'vainly treating the 
 bread which you hold in your hand as part of the Body 
 sacrificed.' Lightfoot cries out, 'No more victims, no 
 more priests offering sacrifices to make atonement !' The 
 corporeal presence of the Host is an idea utterly discarded 
 in our Church. 
 
 c 
 
34 HIGH CHUECH VIEWS 
 
 High Church Views. 
 
 The objectivity of High Church ideas naturally clings to 
 the actual conversion of the bread and wine in some sense 
 into the very Body and Blood of Our Lord; and a compromise, 
 between the literal and figurative meaning of Our Lord's 
 words, is found in the phrase ' Keal Presence.' It did not 
 require the reams that have been written to show that this 
 phrase bears either meaning, according to the sense in 
 which the word ' Real ' is taken. ' Real,' in the sense of 
 substantial (as in the phrase real property), would qualify 
 the Presence as corporeally in the bread ; but in the sense 
 of actual it might imply no more than a very special 
 Presence of Christ ' in the midst, where two or three are 
 so solemnly gathered together in His name.' A definition 
 by an equivocal term is valueless, or mischievous as a 
 deceit to those who use it, and to those who hear it used. 
 Such a disputant as Mr. Enraght could stand firm to the 
 literal meaning, and yet suppose it to imply a Spiritual 
 eating of the Flesh, taking the metaphor and the fact as 
 one idea. An actual divine communication all agree to — 
 ' a dwelling in Christ, and Christ in us.' Cranmer meant 
 plainly transubstantiation by Real Presence, when he pro- 
 secuted those who rejected the term; and he afterwards 
 died for rejecting it in that sense himself. Dr. Harrison's 
 'Answer to Dr. Pusey's Challenge' on the contrary as 
 plainly maintains that wherever the word Presence is used 
 by any of the Fathers in relation to the Eucharist, Christ's 
 spiritual, not corporeal, is meant.' 
 
 The phrase 'Real Presence' is supposed by many to recon- 
 cile the objective and subjective views. Bishop Ridley died 
 rather than take the cover of equivocation ; but he pointed 
 out that the partaking of Christ all profess, only differ- 
 ing in the manner; whether it be meant a partaking of 
 His Passion, or the grosser idea of the Body itself. The 
 fact is, our Prayer-Book has so much of the same Ian- 
 
OF THE LORD S SUPPER 35 
 
 guage as the Missal, care being taken to avoid unnecessary 
 difference suggesting distinctive doctrine. Jeremy Taylor, 
 in a large spirit of Christian peace, says : ' Enter not into 
 curious inquiries, and differing apprehensions of mysteri- 
 ousness or seemingly opposed doctrines, by which good 
 men stand at a distance, and are afraid of each other. Since 
 all societies of Christians pretend to the greatest esteem 
 of this the holiest of all the ministries of religion. All 
 speak honourable things of it, and suppose great blessings 
 from it.' On ' Keal Presence ' (edit. 1865, p. 13), he asks, 
 ' Where is the intelligible difference between Christ's Body 
 being present in the Sacrament really but spiritually, and 
 in the Romish view substantially but mysteriously as a 
 spiritV And (p. 28), 'Rome and England may be reconciled 
 by explanation of the terms used.' And so may High and 
 Low agree to the phrase ' Real Presence ' between the two 
 senses of the word ' Real,' as substantial or actual. 
 
 Dr. Pusey says : ' The dispute between Rome and 
 England is as to any change of substance.' In his 
 Eirenicon he replies to Cardinal Manning's allegation of 
 English disbelief in transubstantiation and the sacrifice of 
 the Mass, by saying, ' We do believe a real objective presence 
 of Christ's Body and Blood ; but in a spiritual manner.' 
 
 Alexander Knox described himself as ' though in senti- 
 ment far from High Church, yet finding many points of 
 agreement ' (i. 392, 5th edit., 1844). ' The Eucharistic sym- 
 bols, when once sanctified according to the Lord's appoint- 
 ment, become, in an inexplicable but deeply awful manner, 
 the receptacles of that heavenly virtue which His divine 
 power qualifies them to convey. Christ consecrated bread 
 and wine the virtual representations of His Body and 
 Blood in this Sacrament ; and, by consequence, the effective 
 vehicles of their influence to all capable partakers.' He 
 thought the English Church the destined link between ob- 
 jective and subjective views; and the difference between a 
 spiritual bodily presence and a bodily spiritual presence 
 
36 LOW CHURCH VIEWS — REFLECTIONS 
 
 to consist of a refinement of idea evanescent to plain prac- 
 tical apprehension. The pervading idea of Canon Paget's 
 essay in Lux Mundi is that the consecration of material 
 elements to be the vehicles of Divine grace keeps up that 
 vindication of the material against sham spiritualism 
 which the Incarnation and Ascension of Jesus Christ 
 achieved; and so Christianity maintains its hold on the 
 whole life of man. Means appealing to the senses effect 
 the work of God on the soul. 
 
 Low Chiwch Views. 
 
 Bishop Ryle thus expounds the Low Church view 
 (p. 239) in brief: 'There is a real spiritual presence of 
 Christ with true communicants in the Lord's Supper. 
 That great ordinance of Christ has a special blessing in 
 His peculiar presence to the heart of believing communi- 
 cants. The words, " Take, eat," mean that believers eating 
 that bread in remembrance of Christ find a special presence 
 of Christ in their hearts, and a special revelation of His 
 sacrifice of His Body and Blood in their souls. His bodily 
 presence they cannot find either personally, or in the 
 representative signs consecrated.' He refers to the Rubric 
 at the end of the Communion Service, by which it is declared 
 that no adoration ought to be made either to the sacra- 
 mental bread and wine, or unto any corporal presence of 
 Christ's natural flesh and blood (p. 249). 
 
 Reflections. 
 
 Strange indeed it is that the most sacred means 
 ordained for all men's peace with God, and with each other, 
 should offer the greatest bone of contention. It was 
 immediately after the institution of this Sacrament that 
 Our Lord gave, in its illustration, the Parable of the Vine. 
 The grafting into Himself, and of all into one Body, as the 
 branches united to a vine-stem, represents a communion of 
 
FASTING COMMUNION 37 
 
 far deeper meaning than can be affected by any difference 
 of view as to its process. Those who can lose such 
 union of heart and soul with the Lord and with each 
 other, in dispute about the means, are not worthy com- 
 municants themselves. They are unduly troubled with 
 rufflings on the surface of a transcendent depth of peace. 
 The ' Sacramentum Eucharistise ' of our Latin Article is 
 what we ask God to accept at the conclusion of the Office 
 — ' our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.' The High 
 Church prefer calling it a celebration, the Low a com- 
 munion, both being Prayer-Book phrases, but respectively 
 significant of the objective and subjective view of the same 
 great service. How can Bishop Ryle say that great prin- 
 ciples are at stake ? (p. 221.) Considering even the extreme 
 of superstition in one direction, and the coldest rejection 
 of all mystery in the other, all may unite hi full communion 
 with Our Lord, and with each other, while contemplating 
 the Sacred Body and Blood however really, or only emblem- 
 atically, presented to their joint devotion. 
 
 Fasting Communion. 
 
 The High Church attach much importance to a prece- 
 dence of the Lord's Supper before the taking of any 
 common food. 
 
 A view so materialistic seems in strange contrast with 
 higher conceptions of the sacred ordinance. But it 
 naturally belongs to objective apprehension, identifying the 
 symbols with the worship itself. Surely reverence is mis- 
 placed when consecrated elements are ranked in any order 
 of precedence with common food. A tract much used on 
 the subject relates that a Bishop of Alexandria in the fourth 
 century raised serious questions whether a man into whose 
 mouth a splash of water from his bath had entered was 
 fit to communicate that day. So fanciful may arbitrary 
 notions of the most sacred subjects become. The most rigid 
 
38 FASTING IN GENERAL 
 
 fasters allow themselves a cup of tea, which is worse than 
 a splash of water. Fasting Communion, however, is said to 
 have been a custom of the Church ; and therefore, as mos 
 pro lege, an unwritten law. But Augustine, who is the chief 
 referee for what is called custom of the Church, expressly 
 states that this custom was caused by the irregularities in 
 ' Love Feasts,' referred to in the epistle to the Corinthians, 
 from which it became necessary to separate Communions. 
 
 The first institution was ' after supper,' for which, how- 
 ever, Gregory Nazianzen apologises, saying, ' Every action 
 of Our Lord is not necessary to be imitated, and there is 
 no command that the details of Maundy Thursday, on 
 which day the first institution is followed exactly, should 
 be considered a pattern for all celebrations.' 
 
 The first ' breaking of bread,' after the Resurrection, by 
 Christ Himself with the disciples at Emmaus, was ' as they 
 were eating,' and St. Paul's after his sermon at Troas was 
 near midnight. 
 
 It is alleged that there is practical advantage in com- 
 municating the first thing at daybreak, before the thoughts 
 are dissipated by breakfast conversation ; but there is no 
 necessity for such discomposure, and the mind may be 
 both more vigorous and more collected, by preparation for 
 later communion, to which the morning service also will lead 
 up. A hurried rush from bed precludes any immediately 
 preceding preparation, and is an effort tending to relax 
 attention to subsequent devotions through the day, as 
 is obviously the case in the habits of foreign Sundays. 
 But the Creator hallowed the whole seventh day as not too 
 much refreshment of the higher spirit for making religion 
 of all the week's employment. 
 
 On Fasting in general. 
 
 Our Rubric assigns a third of every year for days of 
 abstinence. Forty days in Lent, Fridays, Ember Days, 
 Vigils, etc., exceed altogether a hundred days. 
 
FASTING IN GENERAL 39 
 
 The High Church think more of such observances as 
 being appointed by the Church. The Low Church think 
 more abstractedly of the benefit derived by both from such 
 observances. 
 
 The Lenten fast of forty days is a part of the course 
 adopted by Christians of seasons commemorative of the 
 events of Our Lord's life on earth. Every spring the 
 miraculous discipline He underwent in preparation for His 
 opening ministry, and for His crucial conflict with the 
 Prince of this world, is sympathetically commemorated. 
 No actual imitation every year of this superhuman action 
 could, of course, have been imagined ; but a specially peni- 
 tential season Avas set apart commemoratively, and for the 
 cultivation of the same spirit of humiliation and discipline. 
 
 All religions have fasting seasons. The Mohammedan 
 Ramadhan exactly coincides with the Christian Lent. 
 
 The fasts related in the Old Testament are chiefly con- 
 nected with special occasions, both private and public, 
 but there were also appointed seasons when ' the bread 
 of affliction ' was eaten (Deut. vi.). Whether stated fasts, 
 or fasts on occasions of special undertakings, distresses, 
 sorrows, or penitencies, all meant prostration of the soul 
 before God, in confession and supplication. 
 
 There are no specific rules in Scripture for modes of fast- 
 ing — there is not even a direct command to fast ; but the 
 habitual practice is assumed ; and when Our Lord was asked 
 why His disciples fasted not, He replied that they would 
 do so when He was no longer visibly with them. He said, 
 indeed, on one occasion that an unclean spirit could only be 
 got rid of by prayer and fasting. His only direction on the 
 subject was that none should fast for merit or ostentation, 
 for the reward was higher in secret and with God. In the 
 Old Testament true fasting is expressly distinguished form 
 ' bowing down the head like a bulrush,' and associated with 
 active service and self-sacrifice, 'loosing the bonds of wicked- 
 ness, and letting the oppressed go free ' (Isaiah lviii. 5.) 
 
40 FASTING IN GENERAL 
 
 Neither in the Old nor New Dispensation has fasting any 
 Scriptural authority in the sense of asceticism, which was 
 never entertained as doctrine in the Church at all till the 
 second century, though dating far back in Eastern practice. 
 The word itself is a Greek expression for severe athletic 
 training, which St. Paul compared with Christian discipline 
 to shame its comparative laxity, though in a higher sense 
 and aim. Asceticism, in the idea of self-infliction, was a 
 doctrine of Pythagoras, and of Stoic philosophy, and gave a 
 name to a contemporary sect of Jews. It crept into the 
 Church with Monasticism, and going into a convent became 
 synonymous with entering religious life. The genial spirit 
 of Christianity has little sympathy with the narrow clique- 
 ship of unsocial reclusion, nor its diffuse enjoyment with 
 the singularity of bodily austerities and abstinence. 
 
 Fasting, in the grosser sense of deprivation of ordinary 
 sustenance for full capacity of active service, cannot be 
 such as the Rubric means for practice during a third of 
 every year. That were a contradiction of all Scripture 
 and common sense. 
 
 The Romish Church, enjoining fasts in number more 
 than those we have retained, loses all sight of the work- 
 ing — that is, the most numerous — classes; and has led 
 the wealthier classes to sham pretences of fasting by 
 gastronomic distinctions of more delicate feeding. 
 
 A man in health should, ordinarily, eat and drink no more 
 than he wants for active life. To eat less resembles what is 
 called in the army malingering, which is a sham disabling. 
 To eat habitually more than nature needs, for pleasure, is 
 what Scripture calls idolatry of the belly. There are festive 
 occasions when more befits, for mental stimulant and social 
 enj oyment, as Our Lord's first miracle ' showed forth.' There 
 are, also, seasons of depression, or voluntary subjection of 
 animal spirits, and retirement for reflection and spiritual 
 exercise, for which less food is suitable. David on one such 
 season said he forgot to eat his bread, which Dr. Johnson de- 
 clared he had never known any man's grief to amount to. 
 
SAINTS' DATS 41 
 
 It may be thought as most men do not ordinarily 
 restrict what they eat and drink to only what they want 
 for strength, these observations are not of general applica- 
 tion. But rules are not meant to meet excess. The 
 Scripture rule is that ' every creature of God is to be 
 received with thanksgiving, and nothing to be refused,' but 
 all temperately used (1 Tim. iv. 4). Temperate feeders can 
 but adapt this lowest feature of fasting discipline to its 
 purpose. 
 
 The High Church take the Table of Fasts as formal 
 rules for imperative observance. 
 
 The Low Church follow their own judgment in the use 
 of Church appointments, and quote St. Paul against fasting 
 as a formal observance, ' Let the heart be established with 
 grace ; and not with meats, which have not profited them 
 that have been occupied therein ' (Heb. xiii. 9). 
 
 No doctrine is at stake in such matters of discipline. 
 
 Saints' Days. 
 
 The High Church naturally attach more authority than 
 the Low to holy days, which are appointments of the Church. 
 Indeed they rank some of them on a par with the day 
 divinely hallowed from the Creation for the spiritual neces- 
 sities and blessing of mankind. This primeval institution 
 of the Sabbath, now the Christian Sunday, ' remembered ' 
 in the commandments, and promised a blessing throughout 
 Scripture, ' poured out from heaven such that there shall 
 not be room to receive it,' is the breathing time of man's 
 spiritual life. ' Holy days ' are valuable means adopted 
 by the Church for impressing on men's minds the most 
 important features of Gospel history. They were, in fact, 
 an adaptation by the Church of previous sacred habits, 
 embraced and consecrated by Christianity. As synagogues, 
 and afterward temples, were purposely engaged as the first 
 churches, and the vestments of heathenism were inter- 
 woven with the paraphernalia of true religion, so the feriou 
 
42 saints' days 
 
 and dies festi were enlisted as Christian holidays, to be 
 kept specially apart from dies profesti, in honour of great 
 events and persons. 
 
 The first Christian Saints' Day memoralised the martyr- 
 dom of Ignatius and Polycarp. Others rapidly followed ; 
 and, as churches multiplied, like honour was done by each 
 to local saints, and Rome asserted her pretensions to 
 supremacy by adopting them all into her Calendar. The 
 number became excessive, and a rivalry of honours began, 
 sometimes given unworthily, and from interest, causing 
 scandal. 
 
 Our Church at the Reformation retained only a few of 
 these days for special memory of Our Lord, The Virgin 
 Mother, the Apostles, and the first Martyr. 
 
 Invocation of Saints was an abuse growing out of this 
 practice, severely condemned in our Twenty-second Article 
 as repugnant to Scripture and superstitious. 
 
 The mind finds natural relief, from the mental 
 strain of worshipping the Invisible, by a resort to more 
 intelligible objects. Hence Romish Mariolatry, pilgrim- 
 ages, sacred shrines, and rehcs. Mr. Gladstone defended 
 the remarkable essay Ecce Homo, from the charge that 
 it laid too much stress on Our Lord's humanity, on this 
 very ground, ' that a yearning for human aid is caused by 
 insufficient realisation of the fact that we possess it fully 
 in Christ Himself The lowest conception needs help for 
 spiritual elevation, and the highest not to lose Christ's reflec- 
 tion in forms of hagiolatry. Saints' days are valued by 
 both High and Low Church in different views — the one 
 more highly appreciating them as authoritative ordinances, 
 the other as felt by them to be useful, but by both as 
 cultivators of sacred memories so realised in the heart. 
 
 We all keep anniversaries of events and persons asso- 
 ciated with, and embodied in, our affections, some as insti- 
 tutions, others of our own choice. The observance of 
 Saints' Days fortifies our common belief in ' the Commu- 
 
RITUAL 43 
 
 nion of Saints,' and in the identity of the Church through 
 all its vicissitudes. 
 
 High Church accuse the Low of depreciating sacred 
 appeals of this kind; Low Church accuse the High of 
 idolatry in the observance. 
 
 The Puritans of Cromwell's army took more offence at 
 window-paintings, and statues representing the Virgin and 
 Child, than at any other so-called vestige of Popery, and 
 their iconoclastic fury was more directed against memorials 
 of Saints than any other feature of their rejected modes 
 of worship. 
 
 We can now more calmly recognise the possible union 
 between objective love of representation, and subjective 
 sublimation of idea, in joint observance of set holy days. 
 
 Ritual. 
 
 It is a noble idea, specially of the High Church, that the 
 worship of God should enlist the best of all our faculties 
 and powers, as the fullest offering possible of the whole 
 man, and the utmost exercise of his reason, taste, and 
 imagination in address to Him Who will be ' loved with all 
 the heart, mind, soul, and strength.' ' All the external 
 gifts of art, such as architecture, painting, and music, may 
 be consecrated to worship ' (Lux Mundi, p. 392). 
 
 The Low Church are less demonstrative; or, as they 
 could say of themselves, less theatrical in their propensities. 
 
 The worship of the heart may be the same from both 
 natures, which differ in themselves, and not in their 
 intention. 
 
 The High Church make appeal to the senses of sight and 
 sound to arouse devotion ; to the eye by dramatic scenery, 
 vestures, processions with flags and banners, illuminations, 
 pictures, images, gesticulations, postures, crossings, and the 
 screened-off stage 1 for the professional performers, the 
 
 1 No doubt the idea is that only priests, and their acolytes, should 
 enter the holiest place. 
 
44 RITUAL 
 
 audience rising as they come on ; to the ear by elaborately 
 artistic music, with loud instruments reducing prayer to 
 obbligato ; the service recitative in formal monotone, stript 
 of natural expression. 
 
 The less dramatic Low Church find such appeals to the 
 senses a hindrance rather than a help to their devotion, 
 and assume a plain simplicity, exaggerated in opposition ; 
 prayers of individual accentuation ; psalmody through the 
 nose, or read like prose ; and endless preaching. 
 
 A man may, indeed, be so engrossed by the devotion, 
 and absorbed in the address to present Deity as to be 
 almost unconscious of any peculiarity in the mode of 
 worship ; but the two contrasted modes are distinctly 
 characteristic of the objective and subjective natures of 
 men's minds. 
 
 It is folly to attach any notion of superiority to the 
 ornate kind of worship, or to assert for the plain worship 
 exclusive spirituality. The majority of any congregation 
 may well be allowed to have their own way, with decent 
 Christian care not needlessly to offend what they think 
 the prejudices of the rest. 
 
 In Papal countries, and in English High Church some- 
 times, worship is made purposely attractive as scenic 
 oratorio, sometimes with admission by tickets. 
 
 The Spanish invaders of the New World found a splendid 
 ritual the most effective means of wholesale proselytising. 
 A grand spectacle gains the easiest access to uncultured 
 minds. The Romish missionaries have always had an 
 advantage over our less dramatic agents among the 
 heathen. Henry Martyn, with his matchless zeal of piety, 
 made no such conquests for the English Church in India 
 as Hue in Tartary for the Jesuits. 
 
 The senses may be good conductors to the heart. The 
 senses give the first impressions. But there is danger in 
 dwelling too much in the sphere of sense. Spiritual life 
 finds its sustenance after first apprehension in the region 
 of the will. The great probation of life is the passage 
 
RITUAL 45 
 
 through outward objects in this world to inward fitness for 
 the next. In any other idea present interests are discon- 
 nected from their intended results. 
 
 Some are more sensitive than others to the influence of 
 the senses, others arrive at truths more naturally by inward 
 experiences. High and Low Church might be distinguished 
 as the one feeling by seeing, the other seeing by feeling. 
 Metaphysicians discriminate the two modes of apprehen- 
 sion as presentative and intuitive, and the same idea 
 embraced either way may give equally and similarly actuat- 
 ing motive. In the matter of ritualism the apparatus of 
 worship has its only value in kindling devotion to the 
 glory of God. Bishop Kyle truly warns that ' our minds 
 are too ready to turn away from spiritual to visible things,' 
 but he too indiscriminately denounces visible ceremonial 
 as defeating the very purpose of worship ' (p. 353). 
 
 Queen Elizabeth, before any actual schism had begun, 
 commanded fifty-three 'Articles of Dispensation' to be 
 read in churches every quarter of a year, by which she 
 hoped to enforce uniformity in mode of worship ; and 
 ' all sort of operatic performance ' to be so limited as, 
 in Neal's estimation, should have satisfied the Puritans. 
 Prayers were ' only to be sung in Collegiate Churches, and 
 there so as to be understood by common people. For the 
 comfort of such as delight in music a hymn, and such like 
 song might be permitted at the end of common prayer.' 
 Neal adds that ' the Puritan disputes, beginning about 
 .vestments, organs, cross in baptism, and such like things, 
 gradually caused misgivings, on both sides, that they were 
 fighting about trifles. Pious persons lamented, atheists 
 laughed, and Papists blew the coals ' (Hist. iv. 105). 
 
 That the different estimates of ritual result from dif- 
 ference of mental constitution is evident from the certainty 
 that no man of exquisite taste for music, or of theatrical 
 fancy, or of pictorial imagination could take Low Church 
 views of worship ; nor, on 'the other hand, could any man 
 insensible to music, immovable by drama, untouched by 
 
46 THE LINCOLN JUDGMENT 
 
 traits of beauty, find his prosaic nature rise to High 
 Church elevation. There are men of high intellect and 
 principle who have failed even to entertain without con- 
 tempt the questions raised in late disputes about ritual. 
 Dean Stanley ridiculed in Convocation the disturbance 
 of the Church ' about clergymen's clothes.' 
 
 Ritual is the manual of order and forms to be observed 
 in Divine Service. Its obvious use and necessity is for 
 decency, and, as far as possible, uniformity, in Christian 
 worship, instead of one setting up something different 
 from others. It is absurd to suppose vital doctrine 
 involved in its greater or less appreciation. There is no 
 orthodoxy in appeal to the senses, nor heterodoxy in 
 ' Praise God Barebones ; ' though there is incompleteness 
 in any worship which does not ' glorify God in our bodies 
 and in our spirits which are His ' (1 Cor. vi. 20). In that 
 view the two ideas of worship could unite more thoroughly 
 in what is essential to both ! 
 
 The Lincoln Judgment. 
 
 Disputes about rites and ceremonies have lately re- 
 ceived a judgment from the Primate, Benson, of the highest 
 order, both of judicial acumen, and conciliatory Christian 
 spirit. 
 
 The questions seemed scarcely worthy of such elaborate 
 treatment — haud dignus vindice nodus. 
 
 A Low Church Association arraigned a High Church 
 Prelate, of great estimation, for practices alleged to be 
 inconsistent with the legal construction of the Rubric as 
 amended at the Reformation. 
 
 Mixed Chalice. 
 
 The first point referred for decision was the authority 
 for mixing water with Sacramental wine. 
 
 A rubric retained in the Prayer-Book of 1549 showed 
 
THE MIXED CHALICE 47 
 
 that this practice was recognised then, but the omission 
 of words in the next edition implied a cessation of the 
 mixing during the actual service, though it seems to have 
 continued to be done before the service began. The judg- 
 ment was given ' that the mixture, as part of the service, 
 is against the law, but the use of a cup mixed beforehand 
 is not an ecclesiastical offence.' Risum teneatis ? 
 
 The practice could only have any value symbolically, 
 and even that in very various senses, at different times. 
 It is stated, in this judgment, that 'in the third century 
 the mixture of water with the wine was taken to represent 
 the union of Christ with His Disciples; but that three 
 principal Liturgies connect it with the effusion from Our 
 Lord's side of water and blood ; and the Eomish Church 
 generally attached to it a signification of Christ's union of 
 humanity and divinity.' Some consider it symbolical of 
 the connection between both the Sacraments ; but that idea 
 might suggest a parallel mixture of wine with the water 
 of baptism ! The libations of classic ritual were usually 
 mixed; the thick wine of olden time requiring dilution. 
 The mixed chalice was sometimes defended in a ' temper- 
 ance ' view, taken from the excesses to which the Love 
 Feasts became liable ; but this view received authoritative 
 condemnation. 
 
 Dr. Hook(G%. Diet. p. 801) observes that 'in the ancient 
 Church the people brought offerings of bread and wine to 
 the priests, from which the Sacramental elements were 
 taken ;' and Cardinal Bona relates that ' when such contri- 
 bution ceased, the clergy having to provide the elements 
 themselves invented symbolisms of their own, both in way 
 of mixing the wine, and substituting unleavened wafers 
 for the broken bread.' St. Chrysostom (Comm. Matth. 
 xxvi. 29) objects to any ' departure from the plain descrip- 
 tion given by Our Lord of the "fruit of the vine.'" Surely 
 High and Low may agree in the Primate's conclusion that 
 such embellishments of the Divine ordinance cannot be 
 
48 CANDLES 
 
 of any authority or sufficient importance to be thrust on 
 unsympathetic congregations.' Irenseus interpreted the 
 words of Isaiah (1. 22), 'Thy vintners mingle wine and 
 water/ to mean that ' the elders mingled with the plain 
 institutions of God their own diluting traditions.' 
 
 Candles. 
 
 One of the points submitted for judgment was the 
 authority for lighting candles on the altar by daylight. 
 
 This practice was expressly limited, by an Injunction 
 of Edward vi., to ' the lighting of two candles only on the 
 high altar ; ' and this was said to be meant to symbolise 
 Christ as the Light of the World. Our Lord, in His 
 common way of parable-teaching, made a like symbolical 
 application to Himself of the light from the Candelabrum 
 in the Temple. 
 
 A great accumulation of argument and learning was 
 collected in the judgment about this use of candles. Very 
 harmless, one would think it, if it helps any one's devotion 
 without disturbing others. But the Romish Church has 
 made such an abuse of the lighting, and carrying about of 
 candles, as a business very subservient to priestly emolu- 
 ment ; and so mystified the meaning, whether for use 
 or ornament, that one wonders less at the dispute 
 being raised. The Low Church, sniffing Popery in the 
 practice, stand up for the strict letter of the Statute; 
 and even argue that its restraint on the practice alto- 
 gether must be absolute, as we have now no ' high altar.' 
 But Dr. Hook replies, ' that it is the high altar alone that 
 remains in our churches,' all the rest having been con- 
 demned on account of the idolatrous practices that were con- 
 nected with them.' The High Church, however, are setting 
 up little side altars again ; and they evade King Edward's 
 Statute, about allowing ' only two candles ' by putting more 
 upon adjoining ledges on the wall. 
 
EASTWARD POSITION 49 
 
 The disputation is unworthy of Sacramental connection 
 altogether, both in its matter and manner, on both sides. 
 
 Bingham thus quotes St. Jerome on the subject (ii. 461), 
 ' Candles being lighted by day as well as night was an 
 innovation on an old custom, which grew from the Christians 
 secretly assembling in hiding places for fear of persecution.' 
 The Council of Eliberis condemned lights in daytime, ' lest 
 they might molest the spirits of the saints.' But St. 
 Jerome relates that ' in all the churches in the East, when 
 the Gospel is about to be preached, lights were kindled 
 though the sun was shining bright ; to show a sign of 
 rejoicing.' To some minds a blaze of candles may seem to 
 do honour to Divine service. Dr. Ryle, however, thinks 
 such illumination ' spoils the dignity and simplicity of 
 New Testament worship ' (p. 353). 
 
 The Primate's Pastoral, following his judgment, calls 
 attention to the ruling principle of St. Paul's life and 
 counsel, that not all that is lawful is expedient, and urges 
 considerateness towards even over-sensitive or prejudiced 
 fellow-Christians. This good advice may check High 
 Church contempt of conscientious photophobia, and miti- 
 gate Low Church fretting at the legal limit of two candles 
 if not surreptitiously exceeded on adjoining ledges. 
 
 Certainly no vital doctrine can be involved in a 
 taste or distaste for illumination, but the supposed honour 
 should be offered, if at all, to God, and not to Saints, or 
 Virgin Mother. 
 
 Eastward Position. 
 
 The Primate had also to pronounce judgment as to the 
 right place in which the celebrant should stand during 
 parts of the Communion Service. The malpractice alleged 
 was standing on the west side of the Holy Table, and not 
 at the north end. 
 
 Ever since Laud's time Puritan objection has been taken 
 to the officiating minister so standing, and facing eastward 
 
 D 
 
50 GENERAL REFLECTION 
 
 while consecrating the elements, for the reason assigned 
 that he so hides what he is doing from the sight of the 
 congregation. The various positions of the table itself 
 at various times make the terms of Rubrics on the subject 
 indefinite, much depending on which is the end or side. 
 The judgment dismisses the question as immaterial, and 
 devoid of all doctrinal interest ; as ' the imputed sacrificial 
 significance of the facing eastward is new and forced, and 
 can have no effect in rendering the position either desir- 
 able on the one side, or illegal on the other.' When the 
 table is so placed that the minister, facing eastward, might 
 screen his mode of action, one would wish the congrega- 
 tion better occupied than in attempts to see. 
 
 Agnus Dei. 
 
 Singing the Anthem ' Lamb of God ' just after the 
 Prayer of Consecration was another point referred to 
 judgment. It offends the Low Church, as associated with 
 the Mass, and adoration of the Host, and implying an 
 actual though unbloody sacrifice, perpetuated by priests, 
 of the Divine Victim once offered for us all. 
 
 But the words ' Lamb of God ' occur in parts of the 
 Communion Service where they can have no such meaning. 
 
 The Primate judged that the Agnus Anthem at the 
 moment of consecration was inexpedient, but not illegal. 
 
 General Reflection. 
 
 In deference to the Primate's authority both High and 
 Low Church may well agree to differ within the range he 
 liberally, and considerately, allows as involving no essential 
 doctrine in dispute, or rubrical illegality. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone well remarked in the debate on the 
 ' Public Worship Bill,' when it was avowedly introduced 
 to proscribe ritualism, that ' the lapse of time since the 
 Rubrics' last correction, the multitude of particulars, the 
 
GENERAL REFLECTION 51 
 
 doubts of interpretation, and diversities of custom, make 
 it unreasonable to restrain varieties of opinion and usage.' 
 ' The Church could not be preserved if we shift its 
 balance of doctrinal expression, or if we treat rubrical 
 interpretation as the basis of doctrinal significance.' If 
 litigation be unavoidable, 'it should be confined to the 
 testing of such proceedings as imply unfaithfulness to the 
 national religion.' 
 
 The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council have dis- 
 missed an appeal against the Primate's judgment. The 
 country may be congratulated on a practical termination of 
 Church conflict on such questions, evidently beyond even 
 Lord Grimthorpe's power of resuscitation. 
 
 This judgment cannot be considered a victory for High 
 or Low, but it is a final judicial decision, in Christian spirit, 
 for mutual toleration, on points of exaggerated disputation 
 of secondary importance, disturbing the Church, and the 
 delight of scoffers. 
 
 Neutrality can scarcely be hoped for where parties have 
 so long hoisted hostile flags of doctrinal symbolism : but 
 the opponents may become conscious of disproportionate 
 zeal in the cause, and may find better scope for their 
 energies in joint defence of interests common to both. 
 
 The prosecuted Bishop, and those sympathising with 
 him, have announced full submission to the judgment 
 now confirmed ; but, it may be hoped, they have done so 
 more candidly than a Bishop who has communicated to 
 the Guardian his appreciation of the Eirenicon as a 
 triumph to be meekly taken on his side, and as an oppor- 
 tunity for the other's to drop all he dislikes. Rather let 
 those rejoice who find aid to their devotion in the utmost 
 permitted ritualism, and let those whom Lord Grimthorpe 
 describes as ' neither ordered by the judgment to do any- 
 thing they have not done, nor to abstain from anything 
 they have done,' be content to cease strife on such com- 
 fortable terms. 
 
52 THE DIFFERENCE OF HIGH AND LOW 
 
 'Common Prayer' is the object, and the priceless jewel 
 of peace and love, in the act of making such an offering 
 to the God of love, must not be lost in disputes about its 
 setting. 
 
 Bishop Alford exaggerates ritualistic hostility so far as 
 to suppose joint communion impossible. It may be hoped 
 he stands almost alone in such a view. Lord Grimthorpe 
 only exhibits the result of long exacerbated controversy to 
 the extent of confounding what we still hold in common 
 with Rome with what the Reformation delivered us from. 
 He supposes anything practised or believed in Rome must 
 be antagonistic to our Reformation, and wicked. He con- 
 demns all ' pre-reformation practices ' as part of the errors 
 reformed. He believes a reformed Church can retain 
 nothing of its former self. He argues that any ritualism 
 which existed before the Reformation is only retained in 
 England for love of the corruptions of Rome. The High 
 Church take the retention of old practices, so far as they 
 are sound, as the best part of the Reformation, and approve 
 the recent judgment expressly for its recognition of primi- 
 tive connection. Of course the day-lit candles, Eastward 
 position, and Agnus-singing may be used by some to 
 express the Romish idea of the Mass : but so may anti- 
 ritualists pervert, in their way, Church regulation to wrong 
 meaning. Both ways the true meaning of our Church is 
 departed from. It is truly remarked in the very sensible 
 Spectator that the tendency of the Lincoln Judgment is to 
 make High and Low Church see that on the very secondary 
 subject of ritual there are no differences between them to 
 prevent their cordially communicating together. 
 
 The Difference of High and Low Church Views, 
 though not Vital, are not Unimportant. 
 
 The different aspects in which religious worship pre- 
 sents itself to the two main classes of minds may be par- 
 
CHURCH VIEWS NOT VITAL 53 
 
 tially distinguished by the descriptions mutually given of 
 them by historical writers of both classes, and especially 
 by writers at crucial periods of contest or transition. 
 
 Macaulay characterised the High Church as a worship 
 of ecclesiastical government. Hallam called it a special 
 attachment to hierarchy. 
 
 Dean Church, in the Oxford Movement, says of Whately 
 and Arnold, as the precursors of that High Church revival, 
 ' they could not open their Prayer- Books without seeing 
 that, on the face of it, the Church claimed to be something 
 very different from what it was assumed to be in the 
 current controversies of the time ' (p. 7). He described 
 the previous Evangelical revival as ' recommending itself 
 by gifts of flowing words, not unfruitful of zeal and of 
 philanthropy; but never seeming to get beyond the first 
 beginning of Christian teaching — the call to repentance, 
 and assurance of forgiveness. It had nothing to say to the 
 process of building up the new life. It had consecrated 
 phrases, claiming exclusive spirituality and unworldliness.' 
 
 Aubrey Moore, one of the best of what may be called 
 the free High Church writers of Lux Mundi, exhibits the 
 link between the moderate of both views. He says : ' If 
 the sacrificial system loses its true significance in the 
 recognition of the holiness of God and sinfulness of man, 
 and becomes ritual, perfunctory, and formal, it is hateful to 
 God. Not sacrifice but holiness, not external works but 
 inward faith, not deeds of the law but the righteousness 
 which is of God, is what He requires ' (p. 73). And further 
 (p. 74), ' Every protest against formalism and unreality in 
 religion, and every attack on ecclesiasticism and priest- 
 craft, owes its strength to the truth that, in the Christian 
 idea, religion and morals are inseparably united.' 
 
 Thus both views coalesce in mutual supplement to 
 each other. 
 
 Lightfoot rejoiced in the width of St. Paul's loving 
 comprehension when he addressed the Philippians as ' all 
 
54 FUNDAMENTAL CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 partakers of his grace,' including the Judaising formalists 
 with the more spiritual Christians; and exhorting them 
 all to strive together in the faith of the Gospel. 
 
 Vital doctrine is not necessarily implicated in the dis- 
 tinction between High and Low Church. Christian faith 
 is matter transcendent to the mode of accepting it. Even 
 idolatry of forms and means on one side, and the most 
 slovenly negligence of rules, and self-direction by inward 
 impulse, on the other, may not, even in their extremes, be 
 more than diseases of true Church membership. Still 
 they are diseases which may be symptomatic of unsound- 
 ness, and which must be productive of very seriously ill 
 effects on Christian spirit. 
 
 The devotees of ceremony who expect virtue ex opere 
 operato, and look to human ministry for direct mediation 
 with God, and the careless invokers of the Spirit's response 
 to their unaided call, are both in danger. 
 
 Each wants what the other indulges in excess. Both 
 live in peril of self-complacency and contempt of those 
 ' who are not as they are.' Pharisaism and schism are 
 equal tendencies either way. 
 
 Even though modes of apprehension may only differ' 
 objectively and subjectively, or as poetic and prosaic 
 faculties, yet human pugnacity will breed antagonism out 
 of every difference, and in these matters antagonism is 
 destructive of the spirit, which is on both sides equally 
 essential. 
 
 So, though the difference between High and Low 
 Church may not be vital, it is of grave importance in its 
 effects. 
 
 Fundamental Christian doctrine is held 
 in common. 
 
 William Palmer opens his fifth chapter on The Church 
 with these words, 'That Our Lord, in the time of His sojourn 
 on earth, and afterwards by His Apostles, made a revela- 
 
IS HELD IN COMMON 55 
 
 tion of truths necessary to be believed, is the general con- 
 fession of all Christians.' 
 
 All doctrine which may be fairly called fundamental 
 must be believed by every Christian. AU that the univer- 
 sal Church teaches must be matter of faith, as distin- 
 guished from matter of judgment or opinion, on which 
 latter (said St. Augustine), ' there may be disagreement 
 while the union of faith is preserved.' Our Church 
 enunciates essential doctrine in Creeds and Articles, a 
 denial or explaining away of any of which by any individual 
 must amount to self-excommunication from our Church. 
 
 But false doctrine, and wrong notions of administration, 
 are very distinguishable kinds of error. 
 
 Heresy is a deliberate rejection of established doctrine; 
 and all errors, even in matter of faith, are not heresies. 
 Much error may be venial from early inculcation and cir- 
 cumstances. 
 
 Lord Grimthorpe, addressing the Protestant Church 
 Alliance (January 1889), challenged the High Church to 
 name any doctrine they did not hold in common with 
 Rome, excepting only Papal Supremacy, Infallibility, and 
 the Immaculate Conception. He might have added 
 Purgatory, though some Anglican writers are coquetting 
 with this doctrine in theories about everlasting punish- 
 ment, and further probation after death. But Lord Grim- 
 thorpe is a type of those who have been so blinded with 
 the dust of controversy as not to see that what our Church 
 protested against was not the great truths we must hold 
 in common with Rome, but the errors, corruptions, and 
 assumptions of the Papacy. The struggle of the Reforma- 
 tion so confused men's minds as to identify the Church of 
 Rome with those errors instead of distinguishing them. 
 This reminds one of Lord Raglan, when in joint command 
 with St. Arnaud in the Crimea, old and long continued war- 
 fare having identified the relation of French and English 
 with national hostility, frequently forgetting himself in 
 
56 DOCTRINE HELL) IN COMMON 
 
 discussing different views with his colleague, and calling his 
 allies ' the enemy.' 
 
 It is this sort of confusion that leads many to talk of 
 the Keformation as having introduced a new religion — 
 new faith — new church — into England. 
 
 There is no difference between High and Low Church- 
 men on such vital doctrines as the Incarnation, Atonement, 
 Resurrection of Our Lord, or the Inspiration of Scripture. 
 
 On all such points they are mainly agreed. Bishop 
 Kyle stigmatises all High Church as Romanists, and 
 Mr. Compton, in a recent essay, stamps all Low Church 
 in common as Puritans. Such a cynic as Charles Greville 
 sneers at the vulgar preaching of Spurgeon as ' drag- 
 ging down the Church to Puritanical level, and stripping 
 it of all its splendour ' (vol. ii. p. 88). But our Church is 
 not so divided, as between Romanist and Puritan, in two 
 separate camps. The largest part of doctrinal ground is 
 occupied in common by Rome, High and Low Church, and 
 Dissenters too. During the Oxford controversies the 
 ' Martyrs' Memorial ' was devised for a test of orthodoxy, 
 according to the giving or refusing of subscriptions to 
 its erection. But the test failed to distinguish the loyal 
 from the disloyal. Dr. Pusey subscribed, and Newman 
 refused, and there was the same indiscriminate mixture 
 among the Low Church. 
 
 The ' ideal churchman,' Ward, candidly confessed that 
 ' the Evangelicals and Anglicans were equally obliged to 
 have recourse to explanations which, to all but themselves, 
 were unintelligible and unsatisfactory' {Oxford Movement, 
 p. 193). 
 
 High and Low Church have found their dispute very 
 indefinite. Their strifes of late have greatly served to dis- 
 cover that common ground which has been only viewed 
 by each in different aspects. 
 
 It is disputed that difference of mental constitution 
 cannot account for the difference between Hiajh and Low 
 
DIFFERENCE INSEPARABLE FROM HUMAN NATURE 57 
 
 Church views, because then all High Churchmen would 
 take entirely one view, and Low Churchmen the other. 
 But there is no such rigid line to be drawn between the 
 two. The same mind is differently affected by the same 
 thing in different moods or circumstances. Minds also of 
 naturally opposite tendencies sometimes interchange their 
 characteristics. Liddon, Keble, Pusey, though High Church 
 leaders, were deeply spiritually-minded; and cared less 
 for outward ceremonial than generally characterises High 
 Churchmen. On the other hand, nothing is so theatrical 
 as the spirituality of the ultra-Low Church — rivalling, and 
 competing with, that of the Salvation Army. 
 
 High and Low Church are nearer each other aw fond than 
 they think, and share each other's defects as well as merits. 
 A man may curse the Pope, and set himself up as pope hi 
 his own circle. Another may denounce schism, and assert 
 for himself exclusive churchmanship. In the healthiest 
 action of each propensity there is no rigidly dividing line 
 between them ; nor any monopoly of speciality in either. 
 
 The difference of High and Low Church Views 
 is inseparable from human nature. 
 
 If it be true that there are two main diversities of 
 mental constitution which naturally estimate all matters 
 of interest differently, either in favour of established habit 
 or according to apparent utility, of course the matter of 
 highest interest cannot escape this distinction of treatment. 
 
 The interest of endless consequences must dwarf 
 all temporal interests, which, indeed, are only incidental or 
 auxiliary to it. All know there is a via sola salutis, but 
 men will differently treat its accompaniments, according to 
 their nature. The dingers to the Ark, and the searchers- 
 out for traces of the promised shore, all looked to the Ark, 
 whether dwelling or returning to it, till the tokens of its 
 rest were secure. 
 
00 VIA MEDIA 
 
 The Bishop of Calcutta relates that amongst the 
 Christianised Brahmins the same distinction is apparent, of 
 High and Low Church aspect, as amongst' Christians at 
 home. Though brought up in the same school, having 
 studied the same books, and in every way lived under the 
 same influences, they evince the same duality of mental 
 disposition in different embracement of the faith which is 
 common among men on every subject. 
 
 In fact the absence anywhere of such natural diversity 
 would be a symptom of want of freedom and vitality ; and, in 
 the Church, a defect of universality and comprehensiveness. 
 
 A great High Church controversialist lately confessed 
 that he had come to the conclusion that ' the two schools 
 of thought in the Church of England are permanent and 
 complementary.' They are as necessary to each other in 
 the world of thought as the two sexes in the physical 
 world, and with much the same distinction of natural 
 faculties, those of authority and of sensibility. 
 
 Church life would be unhealthy or extinct if either 
 phases were suppressed. Christian spirit would die out if 
 its embodiment were not a partnership, but an absorption, 
 of different characteristics. 
 
 Via Media. 
 
 There are, in common parlance, three varieties of 
 Church views — High, Low, and Broad — but the last is a 
 neutral centre between the other two rather than any 
 definite distinction by itself. 
 
 Newman dreamt of a Via Media between Rome and 
 Canterbury in which Churchmen might meet by agreement 
 to submit their differences to some human authority, 
 though admitted to be fallible. The failure of assumed 
 infallibility disturbed his ideal of Catholicity. 
 
 Archbishop Tait's view was that 'there are three 
 phases of thought in the Church. One of earnest persons, 
 
VIA MEDIA 59 
 
 thinking more of the deepening of individual spirituality 
 of life ; another fostering a reverent love for the corporate 
 work of the Body of Christ ; and a third dealing more 
 with the intellectual problems of the day' {Life, ii. 297). 
 He thanked God that ' all three schools were now awake,' 
 but added, ' therefore the more need of mutual tolerance 
 and forbearance.' Lord Salisbury took a like view when 
 separating himself from Disraeli's support of Lord John 
 Russell's Ecclesiastical Titles Bill. He described High, 
 Low, and Broad schools in the English Church as its 
 Sacramental, Emotional, and Philosophical divisions ; and 
 argued that ' they must always exist, except when any of 
 them may be temporarily crushed by predominant power ; 
 as they arise not from any difference in the truth itself, but 
 because the truth must necessarily assume different tints 
 as it is refracted through the medium of different minds.' 
 He added that ' on the frank and loyal tolerance of these 
 schools the existence of the Established Church depends.' 
 Lord Cranbrook, then Mr. Hardy, took the same view, 
 characterising three schools in the Church as those of 
 Ceremony, Enthusiasm, and Free-Speculation. 
 
 Dr. Hook considered the English Church as itself the 
 Via Media between Borne and ultra- Protestantism which 
 would collide in rancour but for its central position between 
 them. No doubt the English Church is the Via Media 
 between Romish and Puritan extremes : and High and Low 
 within it are the two natural components of its genuine 
 entirety. There is no room really for a third party, consist • 
 ing of a class of men taken separately, who must all belong 
 to one of the other two. Dr. Hook truly says : ' Were all 
 the religionists in the realm to meet and draw up a national 
 form of Christianity, consistent with Scripture and Catholic 
 antiquity, the vast majority would conscientiously prefer 
 our Liturgy and Articles to any other form.' That is 
 to say, that the terms of our Church meet the views of all 
 its members in its composition of differences in detail. 
 
tSO CHRISTIAN LIFE THE COMMON AIM 
 
 Christian life is the common aim. 
 
 Men of High and Low Church views have equally, if in 
 earnest, the one aim — a Christian life. In both views the 
 Church is the divinely appointed channel of Christian 
 grace ; and different conceptions of the means only present 
 the same main object in different aspects. The theo- 
 logical and the ethical aspect affect differently, differently 
 constituted minds. 
 
 The Saviour's ' fulfilment of all righteousness,' and His 
 reception of the Holy Spirit's descent upon Him, illustrate 
 severally the objective and subjective aspects, in which 
 all men are drawn to the great Exemplar, ' lifted up ' for 
 the imitation of all. Obedience to the Church, and the 
 earnest of the Spirit, are the methods of confidence to 
 walk by the same faith. 
 
 The High and the Low Church revivalists alike pro- 
 fessed, as their motive, a desire for something more satis- 
 factory to Christian minds in the way of Christian life. 
 
 Seek the gift m the means, seek it in the heart, the 
 gift of grace to live aright is the one thing sought by High 
 and Low. 
 
 Christians may seek Christ differently, but ' the end of 
 all their conversation is Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, 
 and for ever.' 
 
 To the High Church the Low seems a negligent way ; 
 and the Low Church accuse the High of ' setting up an 
 unspiritual standard of Church worship.' So Newman 
 was accused, even by Arnold; though his preaching on 
 the ' necessity of holiness for future blessedness,' was the 
 occasion of so inapplicable a comment. 
 
 Gore gives the common sense between these views in 
 his No. 1, p. 2, Bcwivpton Lectures. Christianity is union 
 by faith in Christ, and if churchmanship assumes, in place 
 of this devotion, the acceptance of a system of theological 
 propositions and ecclesiastical duties, the fruit is of inferior 
 
PRAYERS FOR UNITY 61 
 
 quality. On the other hand, too much stress may be laid 
 on personal feelings and on the assurance of salvation. 
 Christians of different tendencies may obscure the true 
 glory of Christian life. But in spite of obscurations, 
 whether by false ecclesiasticism, Protestant subjectivism, 
 or academic intellectualism, a clear standard of human life 
 was set up by Christ, rather in exemplifying moral prin- 
 ciples than by enunciating rules — a life of obedient will. 
 This is a summary of his view, and the substance of this 
 chapter. 
 
 Prayers for Unity. 
 
 All Christians pray for unity, conscious of its being the 
 very essence of Christianity. But each naturally prays for 
 it as unity with his own view, and of strict conformity with 
 his own idea, not only in general aim, but in speciality of 
 detail. 
 
 It is usual, at a Church Congress, for High and Low 
 churchmen to congregate separately in prayer for union — 
 the High desiring the Low may become High, and the Low 
 desiring the High ' to cease as Ephraim from vexing Judah.' 
 (Bishop Kyle, p. 16.) 
 
 No doubt, everybody should wish all others to unite with 
 themselves in everything they consider essentially right. 
 Dissenters of all kinds should wish, if they believe their 
 schism justifiable, that all should unite in their kind of 
 separation. Quakers should desire all the nation, from the 
 Queen downwards, to be Quakers. Methodists must all 
 pray for general nonconformity, which is the only point 
 on which they agree among themselves. But there 
 can be no such mystification between membership of 
 the original Church, and of subsequent sections from 
 it, such as the Apostles expressly protested against, 
 whether special followings of Apollos, Cephas, or of any 
 other man, in whose names none were baptized. Parties 
 within the Church, High and Low, need only pray for 
 
62 CHURCH VIEWS AND RELIGION 
 
 unity in the sense of eliminating differences that are vital 
 to Church doctrine between them. 
 
 Archbishop Tait, throughout an Episcopate of constant 
 ecclesiastical litigation, so far united parties in the Church 
 as to bring their joint abuse upon himself. This entitles 
 him to credit as a fair exponent of the basis from which 
 contrary extremes depart. He realised, what he always 
 argued for, the essential comprehensiveness of a National 
 Church — a phrase disliked by both extremes, but which 
 nations who have lost it would be happy to recover. 
 
 We find ourselves collecting in St. Paul's Cathedral, 
 whenever the whole nation wants to thank, or to propitiate, 
 the Supreme Ruler of our common destinies. If those who 
 have actually separated themselves from the Church find 
 their highest interests at times perforce unite their worship, 
 surely the idiosyncracies within the Church may cease 
 from egotism which exaggerates un- vital differences ; and 
 seek for unity, not each with himself but, in catholicity as 
 comprehensive as the Church itself potentially is. 
 
 Man has but two devotions — to God or self — and the 
 natural fall is from the higher to the lower level. 
 
 High and Low Church Views may have nothing 
 to do with Religion. 
 
 High and Low Churchmen may be equally religious, or 
 they may be equally destitute of religion, as they probably 
 are when self-complacency breeds mutual contempt. 
 
 Ordinances, to which the High Church specially look 
 for definite gifts of grace, are recognised also by the Low 
 Church as channels for the inflowing of the Spirit. But 
 as the Spirit may be lost from High Church observances 
 in lifeless formalism, so may Low Church invocations 
 evaporate in empty sound. 
 
 Idolatry of the means alone will kindle only the idol 
 spirit. Such worship will be heard according to the idols 
 
CHRISTIANS OUTSIDE ANY VISIBLE CHURCH 63 
 
 in the heart (Ezekiel xiv. 4). On the other hand, the 
 aspiration for spirituality may be nothing but the breath 
 itself — Vox et prceterea nihil. 
 
 The higher sense of Church order and ministry may 
 indeed inspire the noblest and most glorious worship, and 
 the simplest oratory may convey to God utterances of the 
 deepest piety. Religion is not necessarily engaged in 
 either process, though its interests may be much concerned 
 in such difference of offerings as may either reduce divine 
 service to be perfunctory, or dissipate it in mere incantation. 1 
 
 But whether sacraments are thought to confer, in the 
 act, mysterious gifts of grace, or merely taken as privileges 
 of Church membership — whether, means of grace are 
 valued as Church appointments, or ' remembered ' as the 
 Creator's provision for maintaining the true Spirit in our 
 probationary life — or whether services appeal gorgeously 
 to the senses, or be plain prayer and praise — religion may, 
 or may not, accompany these different ideas, which have 
 nothing certainly religious in themselves. Life may nourish 
 in either view, or death may brood over both. There is no 
 difference between High and Low Church views which can 
 in itself be a test stantis aut cadentis fidei, nor can religion 
 be predicated, or prejudged, of either appreciation of its 
 provisions. 
 
 The Mass of Christians in the World are outside 
 any Visible Church. 
 
 This discussion suggests that differences between High 
 and Low Church views chiefly come from a difference of 
 
 1 It seems strange to us, now that strife has mitigated, to recall 
 Dr. Arnold's accusation of the reviving High Church, ' That it did not 
 enforce any great point of moral or spiritual perfection which other 
 Christians had neglected, nor in any special manner preach Christ ; so 
 offering a striking contrast to the Low Church religious movement ' 
 {Sermons on Christ's Life, Introd. xxv, 3rd edition). So long did it take 
 even a liberal mind to see the possibility of the same spirit animating 
 or defaulting, in both revivals, as men might be more or less recipient of it. 
 
04 CHRISTIANS OUTSIDE ANY VISIBLE CHURCH 
 
 mental constitution, which alike affects all matters of 
 human interest, and that they need not involve dispute 
 of vital doctrine, nor break community in worship, or 
 cordiality in Christian life. 
 
 But this Christian sympathy is not limited to the 
 visible Church, but shared by many unbrought within its 
 doors. 
 
 Good men and true, both High and Low, within the 
 Church, have a large brotherhood, alike in sentiment both 
 High and Low, outside. 
 
 To repeat Dr. Pusey's words : ' As many members of 
 the Body are not members of the Soul of the Church, 
 who, amid outward profession of the faith, do in heart and 
 deed deny Him Whom in words they worship ; so there 
 are many who, though not of the visible Body, are 
 members of the Soul of the Church, in faith, love, and 
 obedience, cleaving to Him.' 
 
 These outside members of Christ's Church are either, for 
 some reason, innocently separated from the visible Church, 
 or living where none such exists. There are probably more 
 such unattached Christians in the world than are admitted 
 into the Church by baptism. Certainly there must be 
 many more than all those who are true to their profession. 
 
 All true Christians, attached and unattached, constitute 
 together what is called, in the opening definitions, the 
 invisible Church of Christ on earth. Church principles 
 exclude no person of real piety from that communion. 
 There are more fish in the sea than in all nets. 
 
 Many are daily gathering in from outside, as the 
 Gentiles first came in spontaneously to the opening doors, 
 and the Church's spirit is widely comprehensive. The 
 Spirit of Christ is nowise confined to the visible Church 
 which He founded for all. The spirit of recent litigation 
 has been a narrow spirit of exclusion, now relenting. The 
 Christian religion is an engagement of men's willing hearts, 
 and exclusiveness is a counter-spirit. Many whom Rome 
 
VOLUNTARY OUTSIDERS NOT WITHOUT GUILT 65 
 
 has excommunicated, and Geneva consigned to repro- 
 bation, will meet in the end among the redeemed from 
 every nation, when the light of Christ's glorious coming 
 will obliterate traces of mistaken separation, and of sup- 
 posed wanderings from the appointed way. 
 
 But Voluntary Outsiders are not without Guilt. 
 
 Mr. Palmer says (Church, vol. i. p. 83, 3rd edit.): 
 ' With reference to those who are not members of the 
 Church, there is a great difference between those who 
 actually apostatize from the evident truth, and those who 
 have been born and educated out of the pale of the 
 Church's teaching, and have indeed imbibed from their 
 parents or instructors doctrines contrary to the truth.' 
 
 The Wesleyans best illustrate unjustifiable separation 
 from the Church, and violation of Christian unity without 
 excuse. Their leaders are now boasting, in an unchristian 
 spirit of jealous rivalry, that the New World has so 
 increased their number as to exceed that of the Church. 
 But even if this were true, such a prevalence of special 
 denomination would not alter the general claims of Chris- 
 tian union. A tail becoming the larger part of a body 
 would affect symmetry and damage action, but it would 
 not become the body, nor acquire to itself the character 
 of the body. 
 
 But it has been already observed (p. 21) the soi-disant 
 Wesleyans are, of all men, the most anti-Wesleyan. If 
 Wesley's spirit is now cognisant of what passes here it 
 must execrate the abuse of his name, and lament the 
 realisation of his greatest dread lest his stirring Church 
 revival might lead to Church disunion. 
 
 Wesleyans try to escape from this painful conscious- 
 ness by a distinction between ' union : and ' uniformity,' 
 which they say Christ did not make an essential character 
 of His disciples. They have, however, deprived themselves 
 
66 CHURCH PARTIES CONFLICT 
 
 of this vain plea by adopting the Church liturgy through- 
 out, so that nothing remains to characterise their separa- 
 tion but simple jealousy. For such intolerance to preach 
 toleration reaches the acme of self-deceit. It is also the 
 inversion of all Christian principle. 'No theory,' says 
 Curteis (Dissent, p. 22), * can fit such facts except that Our 
 Lord knew not His own meaning ; and, after planting in 
 the world an institution in which His spirit of love might 
 breathe as vital air, He is now well pleased to see envy 
 and dissension part His Church asunder.' 
 
 Is Christ only so ' divided ' ; is He not rather ' crucified 
 afresh and put to open shame' (Hebrews vi. 6) by pro- 
 fessed disciples affecting special devotion in the very act of 
 rending His Body ? 
 
 The differences of High and Low within the Church 
 seem insignificant indeed compared with such treachery to 
 the first principles of its allegiance. But High and Low 
 Churchmen are not guiltless of the same schismatic spirit 
 who exaggerate the differences of views between them as 
 disputes of principle. The Primate mildly condemns them 
 as ' devoid of all sense of proportion in their estimate of 
 what are matters of importance.' 
 
 Church Parties conflict 
 in the presence of a Common Foe. 
 
 Dr. Pusey asked this question in a remarkable letter 
 to the Record (February 1, 1864), 'Why cannot the High 
 and Low Church professions of faith combine against the 
 spirit of unbelief ? ' 
 
 Schisms of communion, and even schisms of faith, are 
 not the worst danger to which the Church is exposed. 
 They are of unchristian spirit, but the spirit of infidelity is 
 Antichrist itself. In the words of the Great Judge Him- 
 self, ' He that believeth not in the name of the only be- 
 gotten Son of God is condemned ' (John iii. 18). This fatal 
 
IN THE PRESENCE OF A COMMON FOE 67 
 
 faithlessness He predicted as the last stage of the world's 
 corruption before His coming again (Luke xviii. 8). 
 
 The early Church had to contend with heathen opposi- 
 tion and persecution. Afterwards danger came from in- 
 ternal controversy, and political corruption. It was in the 
 Church's slumber of last century that the utterly antago- 
 nistic spirit of infidelity stalked forth. The pride of 
 advancing science resented the claims of faith. Human 
 reason ran riot in the province of faith, and speculation 
 wandered into regions out of ken. 
 
 ' The world by wisdom knows not God ' (1 Cor. i. 21). 
 
 In spite of much recovery from this invasion by 
 rationahsm on faith, and of revived recognition of faith's 
 proper claims, there is, at this very moment, sad proof of 
 the damage which has been effected by it, in the extrava- 
 gant eulogies of M. Renan. They so outrun the maxim of 
 de mortuis nil nisi bonum as not even to qualify their 
 praise of his philosophy by any sorrow for his extravagant 
 ridicule of the Christian Creed, though admitted to be a 
 fanciful romancing with no rational substitution for what 
 he sought by scoffing to destroy. 
 
 It is marvellous how little permanent effect all the 
 sceptical theories have had on the general faith of man- 
 kind. Dr. Dale, in his last valuable little volume (The 
 Living Christ) gives the true reason, that faith finds its 
 access through the heart more than head, and one con- 
 sciously answered prayer convinces more than all argu- 
 ment. The conscience of man responds to his Creator's 
 voice speaking to his experience. 'If any man will he 
 shall know. Luther asserted that ' an old woman with her 
 Bible in her chimney corner might know more than all 
 theologians.' 
 
 Still the spirit of unbelief, whether in form of scepticism, 
 or indifference, is the deadliest enemy to the spirit of 
 religion; and all true liegemen of the Cross, however 
 varied or irregular their ranks, are deeply interested, and 
 
68 THE CHURCH NEEDS TO STRENGTHEN 
 
 bound, to merge their differences in rallying round their 
 common standard for combined resistance to their common 
 foe. While High and Low Church are disputing about the 
 process of new birth, or exact meaning of Real Presence, or 
 the prescriptive wardrobe of priests, or legitimate drama of 
 worship ; the world, in Renan's phrase, is ' escaping from 
 the meshes of all belief.' Young ladies are engaged infus- 
 ing their half conceptions of sceptical theories in attractive 
 little novels : the rattle of a talking age is chattering the 
 fancies of unthinking brains, and the flattery of shallow 
 education, and rejected reverence, all swell the tide of this 
 world's last development against the next world's unflinch- 
 ing claims. 
 
 The Church, as the world widens, needs 
 stronger bonds of union. 
 
 If the scattered early Churches preserved unity in the 
 Apostles' doctrine and fellowship only by divine guardian- 
 ship, how much more must Christ's ' presence to the end ' 
 be needed in these days of cosmopolitan development ! 
 
 In the first planting of the Church, on manageable 
 territory, on the confines of old and coming population, 
 and under cover of universal empire, its growth was both 
 compact, and fed all round. But its cohesion was severely 
 tried in the division of empire; and its community of 
 interest, and supply of sustenance, were threatened by 
 the increasing divergence of nationalities. Differences of 
 language, modes of thought, and habits, endangered the 
 continuance of connection, and strained the symmetry of 
 ecclesiastical system. Only Higher Power could overrule 
 such obstacles to union. The Eastern, Roman, and Prank- 
 ish characters could not otherwise have blended and 
 coalesced in the Gentile Church. The world's government 
 passed from monarchy to feudalism, and the spirit of coming 
 democracy breathed throughout the world. Papacy lost 
 
ITS BONDS OF UNION 69 
 
 all semblance of supremacy, and oecumenical councils 
 were succeeded by synods. It was a question whether 
 the synods of separate churches could hold their own, 
 or hold all together. The Church which went out from 
 England to the New World assumed the local spirit of 
 self-government by conventions of delegates, though 
 a cordial intercourse has remained between the Mother 
 and Daughter Church. The synodical action of our 
 colonial Churches is in process of local formation, but in 
 communion with us. 
 
 The test of orthodox doctrine has ever been ' quod 
 semper et ubique.' Now that nineteen centuries constitute 
 the ' semper,' and a hemisphere is added to the ' ubique,' 
 how much greater must be the strain upon cohesion, and 
 trial of identity, and how constant the danger of divergence 
 from the standard of faith ! 
 
 The American Episcopal Church government has revised, 
 without altering, the Prayer-Book of the Mother Church. 
 Pity the name of Protestant is retained by the progeny, 
 which is born into the freedom once for ever gained by its 
 ancestry. Frederick the Great, in some campaign, making 
 a convent his headquarters, found them still praying, 
 after two centuries, for the soul of their founder. ' What,' 
 said he, ' not yet out of purgatory ? I confiscate your 
 fruitless charity.' Eternal ' protest ' might similarly dis- 
 credit the success of 'reformation.' 
 
 The disestablished Irish Church has also revised the 
 English Liturgy, with only two verbal emendations. 
 
 Succeeding Churches must far outnumber the Mother 
 Church. So Alexander's conquests far exceeded the home 
 of his achievements, avert the omen of his scattered 
 empire, over which heaven's guardianship did not preside ! 
 If the Church ' but to itself be true,' its Lord has promised 
 that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Separate 
 communions, calling themselves Churches, severed ramifi- 
 cations from the original stem, can hardly expect the vital 
 
70 CATHOLICITY FORBIDS IDENTITY 
 
 sap to flow in limbs so parted from the stock. They spread, 
 indeed, from out each other, as the fingers of ungenuine 
 roots, which multiply in loss of character. The true Church 
 keeps in fruitfulness the branches 'which abide in it.' 
 
 ' A broken lineage, and a doubtful race, 
 Gan't count on pledges of perennial grace. ' 
 
 But Catholicity forbids Identity 
 both in corporate and individual Communion. 
 
 An institution meant to embrace the whole of this wide 
 and varied world to its full development must admit, in 
 all non-essential details, freedom of idiosyncrasies, both 
 national and individual. There can be no identity of type 
 throughout such confederation. 
 
 The Warden of Keble College writes, in his article on 
 the Church, in Lux Mundi : ' The very fixity of its great 
 central doctrines allows remarkable freedom to individual 
 opinion. As time goes on it is right that the old truths 
 should be elaborated, polished, and adapted. It is wrong 
 that they should be changed, maimed, or mutilated. The 
 claims of the society may be urged too far, to the detriment 
 of the individual. The central organisation may crush out 
 national life, and give no scope for individual development ' 
 (pp. 388-9, 396). This view contemplates the Church as 
 not only stretching itself over new diversities of nationality, 
 and among varieties of individuals and circumstances, but 
 as meeting new demands of developing intelligence, and 
 increasing experiences of mankind. 
 
 None can suppose that the Creator did not anticipate the 
 full requirements of His spiritual provision for the world's 
 whole history in every phase of its gradual probation. 
 The most senseless cavil of scepticism is that the inspired 
 writings correspond with contemporary limitation of scien- 
 tific knowledge, which is ordained to be progressive, and 
 which, in its utmost measure, is infinitesimally small after 
 
TRUE CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP 71 
 
 all. This measure Divine Providence has comprehended, 
 but not disturbed, in its revelations from time to time to 
 man. The brotherhood of Churches, as well as the com- 
 munion of individual membership, merges specialities of 
 circumstance and character in one comprehensive scheme 
 of the Church's commonwealth for all time. 
 
 With the dangers of development there accompany 
 advantages of widening opportunities of Christian inter- 
 course, strengthening the whole body, and kindling larger 
 sympathies both in corporate and individual relations. 
 
 True Christian Fellowship. 
 
 Christ used two seemingly opposite proverbs on two 
 different occasions. When the Pharisees blasphemed His 
 casting out devils by His Holy Spirit's power, He said, 
 'He that is not with Me is against Me' (Matt. xii. 30), 
 that is, the rejection of My Spirit is the rejection of com- 
 munion with Myself. When some who were not followers 
 of Him cast out devils in His name, He said, ' He that is 
 not against Me is with Me ' (Mark ix. 39), that is, when 
 My Spirit is not rejected, but invoked, the will, that is 
 the man, is in communion with Me. 
 
 Surely Christians may apply their Master's maxims ; 
 and though they must consider those who are not with 
 them on points of vital faith, and in the Christian spirit of 
 unity, to be not of their following, yet those who are not 
 following with them, if invoking the same Spirit in the 
 name of Christ, they may consider to be in heart and will 
 with them. Much more may men of only different ways 
 in the same following recognise a full communion, and 
 render without reserve joint homage to the Lord of all. 
 
 The Churches of the Old World, and those of the New, 
 different as are their atmospheres both of contemplation 
 and of action, may breathe together the same spirit of 
 -catholic Church-fellowship. Among Churchmen indivi- 
 
72 TRUE CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP 
 
 dually different modes of mental vision will range from the 
 highest to the lowest appreciation of the Church, yet fail 
 not of the one comprehensive idea ; unless evil thoughts 
 of one another, and self-complacency, disprove the dwelling 
 in them of the Church's Spirit altogether. 
 
 Christianity is essentially a matter of willing minds, in 
 common devotion to Christ, however differing in then- 
 honest conceptions of that devotion. 
 
 Some say Christianity is dying out in the world, but it 
 may be hoped, especially from recent appearances, that 
 what is dying out is the taking for Christianity what 
 it is not — namely, speciality of views concerning Christ's 
 Church. High and Low are coming to recognise their 
 fellowship. English Bishops, High and Low, have made 
 great efforts lately, whatever may be thought of them, 
 yet intended, for complete re-union from departures in 
 both directions. But religious differences are not recon- 
 cilable by treaty. Such recoveries of peace and unity 
 come silently, and almost imperceptibly. Controversy has 
 done good work in discovering how little has been vital in 
 contention. The chief features of our Church have always 
 retained their pristine type. Churchmen, High and Low, 
 if only in earnest, evince in their lives the universality of 
 the system into which they are incorporated, and to which 
 they all belong. 
 
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