THE GIFT OF >^cm..,.a.-.3^.,AAjSNl!fe. ^.^..s-'-a..ii.^..v:x,,...^.... .ka^ivvx"^ ^a4«'3> 4553 The date shows when this volume was taken. All books not in use for instruction or re- search are limited to four weeks to all bor- rowers. fferiodicals of a gen- eral character should be returned as soon as possible ; when needed beyond two weeks a special request should be made. Tyimited borrowers are ' allowed five vol- umes for two weeks, with renewal privi- leges, when a book is not needed by others. Books not needed during recess periods should be returned to the library, or arrange- ments made for their return during borrow- er's absence, if wanted. Books needed by igore than one person are placed on the re-= serve list. as CHUECH AND CREED Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://archive.org/details/cu31924029358706 Chuech and Creed Scrmnns ^rBacfjcB in tfjt Cfjapcl of tfje jF0unSKng I^DSpitsl ALFEED WILLIAMS MOMEEIE M.A., D.SC, LL.D. ~ LATE FELLOW OF ST JOHN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE ; PROFESSOit OF LOGIC AND METAPHYSICS IN KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON SECOND EDITION WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS EDINBURGH AND LONDON MDCCCXC All Riffkts reserved CONTENTS. PAGE THE CHtJHCH, . . . . 1 THE CHURCH OF EKGLAND — I. THE CLEEGY, . . 13 II. THE LAITY, . 29 THE ATHANASIAN CREED. — I., 41 THE ATHANASIAN CREED. — II., 54 SALVATION BY CREED, . . .70 CHRIST'S PLAN OF SALVATION, . . 80 THE CONNECTION BETWEEN CREED AND CONDUCT, 92 IDEALS, . . 105 USE AND ABUSE OF CREEDS, 117 REVERENCE — I. ITS DEFINITION, . . . . 127 II. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN REVERENCE AND RESPECT, . 143 vi Contents. REVEEBNCE : coniinuiS, — III. CRITICISMS, . 157 IV. IIS EVOLUTION, 169 V. ITS EVOLUTION — (continued), ■ 182 LITTLE KINDNESSES, . . . 196 LAUGHTER, . . . 208 THE EBSURRECTION OF THE BODY, 220 THE GODS OP THE BIBLE, .... 233 THE DIDACHE ; OR, TEACHING OF THE TWELVE APOSTLES, 246 The Church. " The general assembly and church of the first-born, who are written in heaven." — Hebrews xii. 23. " God is no respecter of persons ; but in every nation he that feareth Him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with Him."— Acts x. 34, 35. /^UE Eitualistic friends very much dislike to ^ hear the Church spoken of as a sect, — as merely one among a number of opposed and competing denominations. Now I quite agree with them that a Church is, or should be, some- thing essentially different from a sect. But I do not think they generally see in what the true difference consists, nor all that that difference involves. The etymology of the terms may help us here. It is as a rule desirable, when we wish to find out the best use of words, to inquire into their A 2 The Church. derivation. We are not obliged, of course, to follow this slavishly ; but the study of derivations is always suggestive, and generally speaking the root - meaning of the word is the best. Now church comes from the Greek word iciipio^, and means therefore that which belongs to the Lord. Sect is derived from the Latin segiU, to follow. A sect consists of those who follow some particular man, as for example Wesleyans, Sandemanians, Swedenborgians, Irvingites ; or of those who fol- low some particular tenet, as for example the Baptists, whose leading doctrine is immersion; or the Independents, whose fundamental principle is that every congregation should manage its own affairs. We shall not be far wrong if we say that the root idea in the word church is God, and the root idea in the word sect is man. It will be worth our while to inquire how far these etymo- logical meanings are borne out in actual fact. To see this we must first distinguish between the Church and a Church, — between the Church and Churches. What is meant, or rather what should be meant, by the Church ? We were most of us, I suppose, brought up to think that The Church. 3 our Church was the Church, — the English Church if we happened to belong to that, or the Eomish Church if we chanced to be Eoman Catholics. But a little reflection will show the absurdity, or perhaps I should say the blasphemy, of such a thought. This is very well explained in the last chapter of Mark Pattison's Memoirs, where he describes his deliverance from the thraldom of sectarianism. He was brought up originally in the narrow faith and sympathies of Puritanism. But by-and-by he came to believe in the Anglican Church, and afterwards in the Catholic Church, whose members, united by a common creed, were to be found in all parts of the world. This idea at first filled him with enthusiasm. But even in this broader notion he could not ultimately rest. " The idea of the Catholic Church," he says, " is only a mode of conceiving the dealings of divine Providence with mankind. And reflection gradu- ally convinced me that this theory of the relation of all living beings to the Supreme Being was too narrow and inadequate. It makes an equal Providence, the Father of all, care only for a mere handful of the species, leaving the rest to the 4 The Church. chances of eternal misery. If God interferes at all to procure the happiness of mankind, it must be on a far more comprehensive scale than by providing for them a church of which the majority will never hear. It was on this line of thought that I passed out of the Catholic phase to that highest development, in which all religions appear in their historical light as efforts of the human spirit to understand and commune with God." In other words the Catholic Church, which has only existed for two thousand years, which has only been heard of by a small proportion of the race, is not, as its name would imply, universal ; and it should be carefully distinguished from what is properly called the, Church. That must be co-extensive with the race. And so according to the Bible it is. According to the Bible neither creeds nor rituals have any- thing to do with membership in the Church of God. The Deity, our text says, cares supremely for goodness — and for goodness alone. " In every nation he that worketh righteousness is accepted." The Church of which he thus becomes a member, though it existed ages before " the Christian era," The Church. 5 is not inaptly called the Church of the first-born, — the Church of Christ. " Your father Abraham," said the Saviour, " rejoiced to see my day." My day ? Yes. For Christ is but another name for righteousness, of which He was the great ex- ample and inspirer. The Church then, — the true Church, the Christian Church, the Church of God, the one eternal and universal Church, — consists of those who are written in heaven because they have worked righteousness on earth. Of this eternal and universal Church, it is manifest, temporary and local churches — such as those of England, of Scotland, even of Eome — can form at the best but parts. They cannot in the nature of things be more. Well then, you say, what becomes of the distinction between a church and a sect ? Does that still hold good ? I think it does. I will tell you why. I suppose that the narrowest of the Churches is wider than the broadest of the sects. It is not the holding of certain tenets which makes a sect. For most of the tenets of the sects have been held by members of one or other of the Churches. A sect only arises when persons 6 The Church. separate themselves from communion with their Church. It is not the tenets, but isolation on account of the tenets, which constitutes sectarian- ism. And this isolation shows that an exaggerated and utterly false importance is attached by the schismatics to their own special beliefs. In com- parison with righteousness other things are unim- portant. And upon the whole I venture to affirm that the Churches of Christendom have come far nearer than the sects to the realisation of this fundamental truth. I don't mean to say, of course, that our dissenting friends are not personally as good as we are. For anything I know to the contrary they may be better. But as Dissenters they exist, not to emphasise the im- portance of righteousness, but to emphasise the importance of something else, — agreement in regard to which is made a sine qud non for membership. Exclusiveness is implied in the very idea of a sect. The Churches may not be sufficiently wide; but the sects are formed on purpose to be narrow. In common honesty, however, I am bound to admit that the Churches of Christendom, though The Church. 7 less narrow than the sects, are far from having attained that breadth of sympathy which should belong to them as parts of the Church of Christ. There is not one of them which has fully realised the divine ideal. The Church of England, it seems to me for reasons which I will hereafter explain, is slowly struggling towards it. In the meantime I would warn you that there are per- sons m your Church but not of it, whose chief desire is to degrade it into a sect. At heart they are not Churchmen but Dissenters. Every pro- secution for heresy, every prosecution for ritual- ism, is a deliberate attempt to sectarianise your Church. In all such prosecutions the doctrines and ceremonies of men are made of more import- ance than the righteousness of God. The strangest part of it all is that the pro- secutors flatter themselves they believe in the teaching of Christ. Yet if Christ were here He would say now, just what He said two thousand years ago; and He would say it with infinite sorrow, that men had not yet learnt the lesson. The disciples, you remember, complained, — " Master, we saw one casting out devils in Thy 8 The Church. name, and he foUoweth not us; and we forbad him, because he foUoweth not us." But Jesus said, " Forbid him not : for he that is not against us is on our part. Whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were cast into the sea. It must needs be that offences come, but woe unto that man through whom the offence cometh." What could be more plain ? And yet men are still hankering after uniformity. "Wlien will they learn to be content with unity ? When will they learn that unity does not involve uni- formity, — that the highest unity manifests itself in diversity ? The lesson seems a simple one to those who have mastered it. But it is a lesson which was never quickly learned. And here, as elsewhere, the truth is first discovered in the physical sphere. Those who are acquainted with modern science are aware that the infinite variety of Nature is perfectly compatible with her unity. There was a time, however, when unity and diversity were thought to be incom- The Church. 9 patible. In early ages the world seemed a chaos. Thousands and tens of thousands of conflicting agents were supposed to be at work in the production of natural phenomena. The woods appertained to one set of deities — the dryades ; the mountains to another set — the oreades. Every star, every planet, was believed to possess a moving principle peculiar to itself. Storms and earthquakes, pestilences and eclipses, were thought to be the work of a variety of beings, who were guided by all sorts of different mo- tives, and whose future action it was absolutely impossible to predict. The variety in nature prevented men even from imagining the unity of God. The history of science records the gradual discovery in this primeval chaos of the unifying principle of Law. Over and over again, phenomena that seemed altogether dissimilar have turned out to be merely different opera- tions of one and the selfsame force. The apple which falls to the ground once seemed to have nothing in common with the moon which does not so fall. But now we know that both are equally under the control of gravity; that the ro The Church. moon is attracted no less than the apple; and that the tendency to fall earthwards, produced in it by this attraction, is one of the factors determining its course. "Whenever we compare phenomena — no matter how distant they may be from each other in time and space, no matter how diverse they may at first sight appear — we now always expect to find in them an under- lying unity of thought and purpose and mode of working ; and sooner or later our expecta- tions are fulfilled. The infinite variety of nature has been summed up by science in a single word — Evolution. And what has been done in the sphere of phys- ical science is being accompKslied, though more slowly, in the sphere of religion. Here too there is infinite variety, — a variety which at first sight seems quite incompatible with unity. '^Q find worship conducted with the most gor- geous ritual, and we find also worship charac- terised by the baldest simplicity. TV"e find ela- borate liturgies, extempore prayer, and voiceless communion with the Unseen. We find a pro- fessed acquaintance with all the purposes of the The Church, 1 1 Deity, and we find altars erected "to the un- known God." We find men frequenting several times a day the ministry of the clergy, and we find others who declare they are helped more by the ministry of Nature. Yet underlying all this adversity the thinker discovers a single instinct, — the desire to do honour to Him who is regarded as the impersonation of perfect good- ness. All these worshippers, differing so much superficially, are nevertheless members one of another ; they are all included in " the general assembly and church of the first-born." "In every nation he that worketh righteousness is accepted." The infinite variety of religious thought and observance may all be summed up in that one word — Eighteousness. The Church of Christ is essentially and neces- sarily a broad church. Broad ? That is a poor word. It is wide -reaching as the Infinite. It is a unity ; for all its members are bound to- gether by their common love of righteousness. But it admits of infinite diversity. My chief business in life is to explain and enforce this lesson. When men have learned it, there will & 12 The Church. be no more sects ; no more religious, or rather irreligious, persecutions ; diversity will remain, but discord will have vanished; all who love righteousness will love one another; religious communities will perceive that they are not separate and antagonistic bodies, but parts of the selfsame organism ; and the Churches of the world will become — in a sense quite differ- ent from that in which the words can now be applied to them — the Churches of our Lord and of His Christ. 13 The Church of England. I. THE CLERGY. "T A. B., do solemnly make the following deelar- -*- , ation. I assent to the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion and to the Book of Common Prayer, and of the ordering of bishops, priests and deacons. I believe the doctrine of the united Glvwrch of England and Ireland, as therein set forth, to be agreeable to the Word of God; and in public prayer and administration of the sacraments, I will use the form in the said book prescribed, and none other, except so far as shall be ordered by lawful authority."— 28 & 29 Vict. c. 122. That is the form of subscription which, since 1865, has been required from beneficed clergy- 14 The Church of England. men of the Church of England. The form which had been in use for two centuries previously ran thus : " I, A. B., do hereby declare my unfeigned assent and consent to all and everything prescrihed in and ly the hooTc entitled the Booh of Common Prayer and Administrations of the Sacraments and other Bites and Ceremonies of the Church according to the use of the Church of England, together with the Psalter or Psalms of David, appointed as they are to he said or sung in churches, and the form or manner of making, ordering and consecrating of hishopis, piricsts, and deacons." The change to which I wish to-day specially to call your attention is this : instead of " un- feigned assent and consent to all and everything contained in the Book of Common Prayer,'' wliich was required in 1662, there was substituted in 1865 a declaration of belief, that "the doctrine of the Church of England as contained in the Prayer-book is not contrary to the "Word of God." I am going to explain to you the meaning of this change, and the various considerations which led to it. The Clergy. 15 There had long been a growing dissatisfaction with the stringency of the old form of subscrip- tion. In 1862 a letter on the subject was addressed by Stanley to Dr Tait, then Bishop of London ; and in this letter the evils of the system were clearly and powerfully exposed. Stanley began by giving a brief summary of the history of subscription. The three first centuries of the Christian Church were entirely without it. The members of the Church made a profession of their faith at baptism ; but this was in the simplest form. It was not an assent to a variety of intellectual propositions, but a profession of service under a new master and of entrance into i a new life. No deacon, no presbyter, no bishop ■ made any subsequent profession. The distinction between the requirements of belief from clergy and laity was as yet wholly unknown. The first subscription to a confession of faith was that enforced by Constantine at the Council of Nicea. " It was the natural but rude expedient of a half educated soldier to enforce unanimity in the Church, as he had by the sword enforced it in the Empire." Subscription, however, was 1 6 The Church of England. only demanded from the bishops, not from the clergy generally. And it seems to have been accompanied by the same casuistry, the same ambiguity, and the same inoperative results then as now. The Eeformed Churches on the Continent, in order to protect themselves from the enemies that hemmed them in or were supposed to hem them in on every side, constructed the most elaborate and stringent Confessions of Faith. In the Duchy of Brunswick, for example, Duke Julius required from all clergy, from all pro- fessors, from all magistrates, a subscription to all and everything contained in the Confession of Augsburg, in the Apology for the Confession, in the Smalcaldic Articles, in all the works of Luther, in all the works of Melanchthon, and in all the works of Chemnitz. But this excess of subscription was followed — not unnaturally — by its entire or almost entire extinction. In England, Stanley showed, subscriptions had been gradual, capricious and accidental growths. Our Church as such* recognises absolutely no subscriptions. " They have grown up as a mere The Clergy. 1 7 excrescence, throiigh the pressure of political and ecclesiastical parties." The Articles were not subscribed by anything like general usage till the twelfth year of Elizabeth. They were then, after much hesitation and opposition, ordered to be subscribed for a special purpose, and with a limitation which considerably mitigated the evil it introduced. The purpose was to check the admission of Presbyterian ministers into the Church of England without re-ordination. And the limitation consisted in the fact that the clergy were to subscribe only those Articles which concern the " confession of the true faith and the doctrine of the sacraments." The liturgy was not subscribed till the reign of James I. "Then, by a paradox unknown to any other Church in Christendom, the liturgy was turned from its proper purpose of expressing the devo- tion of the congregation, into a storehouse of theological propositions, to be enforced on all those who had not the knowledge to distinguish between the nature of a liturgy and a creed." Finally, by the Act of Uniformity passed under Charles II., the stringency of subscription to 1 8 The Church of England. both Articles and liturgy was increased, with the express purpose of driving from their places in the Church as many of the Puritan clergy as possible. Unfeigned assent and consent to all and everything contained in the Prayer-book was then demanded from every clergyman of the Established Church. This demand — which was still made in 1862, the date of Stanley's letter — was at once absurd, mischievous and futile. I. It was absurd. For the Articles consist of a number of complicated propositions drawn up by men who lived three hundred years ago, in the heat of vehement struggles which have long since passed away — "by men who, venerable as they were in stg,tion, and some of them estimable in character and distinguished in ability and learn- ing, were still not the foremost men of the age in which they lived, and therefore not the men whose expressions on these subjects we should most nat- urally expect to be permanent." It might be said that the evil of subscription was diminished by the liturgy ; since there is hardly a statement in The Clergy. 19 the Articles to which objection can be raised, that is not neutrahsed by some countervaihng expres- sion in the liturgy. But manifestly the fact that the one may be corrected by the other is no reason for giving unfeigned assent and consent to all and everything contained in both. As some parts of the Prayer-book are inconsistent with other parts in spirit if not in form, to demand assent to everything contained in it is to ask for the impossible, — which is absurd. II. Sometimes the absurdity was not seen, and then the demand led to many mischievous conse- quences. It was often thought that the terms of subscription must be understood in their most rigid sense, and that every word in the Prayer- book must be accepted, without regard to the general spirit of the whole. Many devout and earnest students were on this ground prevented from taking orders, and their services were thus lost to the Church. Intelligent and thoughtful men " could not assent to the literal and dogmatic meaning of the six hundred propositions on the most intricate and complex subjects which the 20 The Church of England. Articles embody; they could not assent to the literal and dogmatic meaning of all the sentences in the liturgy, — many of them poetical and devo- tional in form, but which must be received, ac- cording to a strict subscription, in their most prosaic and matter-of-fact signification ; still less could they assent with unhesitating confidence to both these sets of propositions, emanating from ages unlike each other, and each no less unlike our own." All, therefore, who thought that the Church required this of them, had nothing for it but to remain outside. But the worst mischief caused by subscription was within the Church itself. The Articles and the liturgy were turned into weapons of recrimi- nation. In times of controversy "no phrase of the Articles was too parenthetical, no term of the liturgy too rhetorical, to be pressed into the ser- vice." The large and liberal constructions which were generally admitted in times of peace, and which every party in the Church was obliged to claim for its own interpretation, were — when used by theological opponents — branded as soph- istry or disingenuous subtlety. To the general The Clergy. 21 evils of controversy were thus added the great and peculiar aggravation of the embitterment caused by mutual imputations of dishonesty and bad faith. We need only recall the language employed by High Churchmen against Low Churchmen in the Gorham controversy, by Low Churchmen against High Churchmen in the con- troversy of the 'Tracts for the Times;' and by the extreme partisans of both these sections in the controversy of the ' Essays and Eeviews.' All such exhibitions of internecine warfare caused great scandal, and brought the Church into contempt. III. And where subscription was not mis- chievous, it was at all events futile. It did not produce uniformity. Those who subscribed were obliged, in the nature of things, to give to the Articles and liturgy a more or less liberal inter- pretation. They felt that the mere fact of the enormous scope of the subscription, involving assent to documents so various in kind and in part so contradictory, must by the very force of the terms imply a general and not a particular 2 2 The Church of England. assent — a reception of the whole, not a reception of each particular part. The Low Churchman interpreted the Liturgy by the Articles ; the High Churchman interpreted the Articles by the Liturgy ; the Broad Churchman adopted what he conceived to be the general spirit of both. Stanley gave many illustrations of the fact, that those who had subscribed according to the old form, nevertheless did not accept " all and every- thing contained in the Prayer-book." Accord- ing to the Athanasian Creed, for example, every single member of the Greek Church must " perish everlastingly," because he does not believe that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the, Son. But an eminent prelate once said — "I never met with a single clergyman who believed this in the literal sense of the words; and for the honour of human nature and of Christianity, I trust not one lives who would deliberately aver that such was his belief." The doctrine, therefore, which the Creed condemns was thus generally admitted within the pale of the English Church. Again, the sixth Article " understands by Holy The Clergy. 23 Scripture those canonical books of the Old and New Testament of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church." Taken literally, the subscription to these words would exclude from the clerical profession all those who receive as Holy Scripture the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Apocalypse, the second Epistle of St Peter, the Epistles of St James and St Jude, and the second and third Epistles of St John,— of whose authority it is well known there was considerable doubt in the early Church. " Yet this statement of the Article was not only overridden but even forgotten; and the vast majority of the clergy of the Church of England, in defiance of the Article and of their subscription to it, received as Holy Scripture without scruple those books of whose authority there was doubt in the Church for no less than three important centuries; and they even attacked as heretical those who adopted the language of the Article itself." Illustrations of this kind may be multiplied indefinitely. " If once," said Stanley, " we press the subscriptions in their rigid and literal sense, 24 The Church of England. it may safely be asserted there is not one clergyman in the Church who can venture to cast a stone at another; they must all go out, from the Primates at Lambeth and Bishops- thorpe to the humblest curates of Wales or Westmoreland." The continued existence of the Church of Eng- land, therefore, depended upon a wide latitude in the interpretation of the Prayer-book. Every clergyman allowed himself more or less liberty, as to what he accepted and in what sense he accepted it. But with this latitude the old form of subscription was on the face of it inconsistent. "Assent to all and everything" in the Prayer- book was a very bad form of words for express- ing assent to the general tenor of it. And this manifest inconsistency, between the supposed requirements of subscription and what happened in actual fact, led frequently to much bitter re- crimination, and to the exclusion from the min- istry of many whose services would have been most valuable to the Church. On these grounds, therefore, Stanley prayed the Bishop of London, the rest of the episcopate, and The Clergy. 25 the legislature in general, to take the whole ques- tion of subscription into their serious considera- tion. " It was observed," he said in conclusion, " of the oracle of Delphi, that during all the ages in which it commanded the real reverence of Greece, the place in which it was enshrined needed no walls for its defence. The awful grandeur of its natural situation, the majesty of its temple, were sufficient. Its fortifications, as useless as they were unseemly, were built only in that disastrous time when the ancient faith had decayed, and the oracle was forced to rely upon the arm of flesh, on its bulwarks of brick and stone, not on its own intrinsic sanctity. May God avert from us this omen ! It is only in these later ages of the Church, and chiefly in the Protestant portions of Christendom, that sub- scriptions have been piled up to circumscribe our oracle and sanctuary. Let us show that we, in these later days, are willing to free ourselves from such unsightly barriers, which encumber, without defending, the truth that they enclose and hide. Let us show that we in our Eeformed Church are not afraid to dispense with those artificial re- 26 The Chii,rch of England. straints, which the Catholic Church, in ancient and as we think less enlightened times, scorned to call to its aid." In the following year, 1863, mainly I suppose owing to Stanley's letter, a Eoyal Commission was issued for the purpose of examining fully into the subject. The result of their inquiry was the introduction of a Bill by Lord Granville in 1865, in which the old, precise, stringent form of subscription was completely set aside, and another declaration was substituted for it — that which I read as my text — a declaration as bare and general as it was possible to be, consistently with the retention of any expression of assent at all. And I cannot too strongly impress upon you the fact that this change was made distinctly for the purpose of broadening the Church. Mr Bux- ton, in his speech before the House of Commons, said — " It was the express intention of the Com- mission to relax the extravagant stringency of the existing tests ; in other words, to make it possible for men to minister at the altars of the Church, though they might dissent from some part of her The Clergy. 27 teaching. . . . All those phrases which indicated that the subscriber declared his acceptance of every dogma of the Church had been swept away ; and this had been done expressly and of fore- thought. Instead of declaring his assent to all and everything the Prayer - book contained, a clergyman now only declared his assent to the Prayer-book itself, that is to say to the book as a whole, and his belief that the doctrine of the Church therein set forth was agreeable to the "Word of God. He would not declare that the doctrines in the plural number, or that each and all of the doctrines, were agreeable to the Word of God, but only the doctrine. It was expressly and unanimously agreed by the Commission that the word doctrine should be used in the singular number, in order that it might be understood that it was the general teaching, and not every part and parcel of that teaching, to which assent was given." After its scope and purpose had been thus distinctly explained to them, the Bill was passed by both Houses of Parliament, and it is now the law of the land. The next time therefore you are asked, as 28 The Church of England. foolish people are so fond of asking, why Broad Churchmen do not go out of the Church, you may give the simple but cogent reply, because of the Act of Parliament 28 & 29 Vict. c. 122, which was framed for the express purpose of keeping them in. 29 The Church of England. II. THE LAITY. " ^iO many as intend to le partaker's of the holy ^^ communion shall signify their names to the curate at least some time the day hefore. And if any of these he an open and notorious evil liver, or have done any wrong to his neighbours hy word or deed, so that the congregation he thereby offended, the curate, having knowledge thereof, shall call him and advertise him that in any wise he presume not to come to the Lord's table, until he hath openly de- clared himself to have truly repented and amended his former naughty life, that the congregation may thereby he satisfied which before were offended; and that he hath recompensed the parties to whom he hath done ivrong, or at least declare himself to 30 The Church of England. he in full purpose so to do as soon as he conven- iently may." — Rubrics before the Communioii Service. The Church of God, we have seen, is — and in the nature of things must be— a broad Church ; it must be in fact co-extensive with the race. Reflection teaclies us that unless the Creator cared for all His creatures He would be un- worthy of the name of God. It is impossible therefore that He should have made special pro- vision for the salvation of a small fraction of mankind, and ruthlessly left all the rest to be damned. The only thing which offers the sha- dow of justification for such a horrible doctrine is the great diversity which exists in men's re- ligious thoughts and observances. But diversity is perfectly compatible with imity. We have found this out in the sphere of physical science. We are beginning to find it out in the sphere of religion. All the phenomena of nature may be summed up in the one word — Evolution. Simi- larly every religious thought, every religious ceremony, is the expression of a single instinct The Laity. 31 — love for goodness ; and the vast variety of phenomena in the religious sphere may all be summed up in the word Eighteousness. This, which we learn by reflection, we may also learn, as I pointed out, from the Bible. The author of the Apocalypse, it is true, speaks of the Church whose members are written in heaven as the Church of the first-born — that is, of Christ. But St Peter most distinctly declares that "in every nation he who worketh righteousness is accepted." The two statements put together amount to this : Christ is but another name for righteousness, and so the Church of Christ is the Church of righteousness. It is an eternal and universal Church, which existed long before the Christian era, and would continue to exist even if all the Churches of Christendom were to col- lapse. The members of the Church of Christ are written in heaven, simply and solely because they have worked righteousness upon earth. Of this eternal and universal Church, it is evi- dent, as I said, that local and temporary Churches — such as those of England, of Scotland, of Eome — can be at the best but parts. Not one of these 32 The Church of England. Churches — witness their excommunications and prosecutions and persecutions for heresy, witness their mutual jealousies and recriminations — not one of them has ever completely realised the scriptural and divine ideal of the Church; not one of them has ever completely realised its own local and partial character ; not one of them has ever completely realised that righteousness — and righteousness alone — is sufficient for membership in the general assembly of the first-born. "When this lesson has been learned — and not till then — the Churches of the world will become the Churches of our Lord and of His Christ. So far in regard to the Church generally. As concerning the Church of England in particular, I said there were certain reasons which led me to believe that it was in reality broader than it seemed, that it had in fact made considerable progress towards the realisation of the ideal. The first of these reasons I explained to you last Sunday. The subscription required from the clergy has been enormously relaxed, — has been made as simple and as broad as it was possible for any subscription to be. " Unfeigned assent The Laity. 33 and consent to all and everything contained in the Prayer-book" was demanded before 1865. But since that date clergymen are only required to say they "believe that the doctrine of the Church as contained in the Prayer-book is not contrary to the Word of God." And, as I told you, the word doctrine in the new form of sub- scription is used in the singular number instead of in the plural, expressly to make provision for diversity of opinion. A clergyman may hence- forth disagree with many of the doctrines con- tained, or apparently contained, in the Prayer- book, provided he accepts the doctrine as a whole. That doctrine is, and must be, expressed by the one word Christ ; and a synonym for Christ is -righteousness. "He gave Himself for us," says St Paul, for one sole purpose, " that He might re- deem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Him- self a peculiar people, zealous for good works." That is the present attitude of the Church of England towards the clergy. And what of the laity ? Here, too, there has been very marked improvement during the last thirty or forty years. Of course from the laity generally subscription c 34 The Church of England. has never been required. But the English uni- versities used to exact it from all their members, — lay as well as cleric. In 1581 subscription to the Articles was enjoined by the Earl of Leicester, as Chancellor of the University of Oxford, to be required of all undergraduates at their matricula- tion, and from all Bachelors of Arts. This was abolished in 1854. Up to 1865 all Masters of Arts at Oxford were required to give, just like the clergy, unfeigned assent and consent to all and everything contained in the Prayer-book. It is hardly necessary to point out that the effects of this were frequently most pernicious. Bentham, for example, who had to subscribe to the Articles at the early age of twelve, declared that it left a stain upon his conscience which was never after- wards effaced ; and he dissuaded the late Marquis of Lansdowne from coming to Oxford, on the ground that it was " a nest of perjury." Cambridge has never been in this respect so strict as Oxford ; but even at Cambridge subscription was formerly required from every graduate before he could be admitted to a fellowship in his college. Now all these creed tests — I had almost said crude tests, The Laity. 35 and the word would have done as well — have been abolished in both universities. The highest honours and emoluments are open to any one who has sufficient learning, and who conducts himself like a gentleman. But the point to which I am most anxious to call your attention to-day is this. According to the rubric which I read as my text, no one can be excluded from the Communion except an open and notorious evil-liver, or — this second clause is ex- planatory — one " who has done any wrong to his neighbour by word or deed, so that the congrega- tion be thereby offended : " not such wrong as the best of us sometimes inflict on our neighbours through thoughtlessness or carelessness, but wrong whereby the congregation is offended. This " no- torious " wrong would show that we were utterly and permanently regardless of our neighbour's welfare and indifferent to his misery. Evidently then our Church looks upon righteousness — or rather the absence of flagrant unrighteousness — as the sole qualification necessary for communi- cants. The Communion has always been regarded in every Christian Church, and I think rightly, as 2,6 The Church of England. the most sacred and the most valuable of all the services. Yet for participation in this privilege in the English Church, no profession of faith can be demanded, no declaration of orthodoxy, not even the vaguest and most indefinite subscription, but only the absence of such conduct as would show a complete and settled antagonism to right- eousness. Attendance at the Communion is the sign and the seal of Church membership. On the part of the communicant, it is the sign that he is in harmony with the spirit and aims of the Church. On the part of the Church itself, it is the acknow- ledgment and ratification of this harmony. This ratifiication our Church never refuses except to the notorious evil-liver. Narrow-minded clergy- men have sometimes kept away intending com- municants upon other grounds ; I remember my own vicar did so on one occasion. But in all such cases it is open to the aggrieved parishioner to take legal action, and if he does so, the clergy- man will inevitably be condemned ; for he has com- mitted an offence — a very grave offence — against the law of the land. A man may not accept the creed which was adopted for him by his godfathers The Laity. 37 and godmothers ; he may no longer agree with the profession of faith which he made at his confirma- tion ; he may be a very sceptic of sceptics ; but, unless he is a notorious evil-liver, he cannot be refused admission to our Communion Service. The Church of England thus — implicitly at any rate — recognises the paramount, and indeed the sole, importance of righteousness. And further, our Church also recognises the practical nature of righteousness, on which I have so often insisted. The notorious evil-liver is not the heterodox man, but the man who has done wrong to his neighbour. The Church of England — implicitly at any rate — accepts the great truth, first taught to the world by Christ, but since almost forgotten, that the service of man is the service of God, that an injury done to a fellow creature is the greatest, and indeed the only, injury which we are capable of inflict- ing upon the Deity. Since, then, unrighteous- ness is resolved according to our Church into wrong done to one's neighbour ; and since wrong done to one's neighbour is indirectly, as I have often explained to you, wrong done to one- 38 The Church of England. self : 1 it follows that the religion of our Church, whatever we may think about its accidental de- tails, is in essBTice a religion which all wise men must accept, which all good men must love. People tell us the Churches are doomed. Well, I do not know. Certainly the old narrow ecclesi- asticism is doomed. But I have great hopes for the future of the Church of England. In the Act of Parliament of which I spoke last Sunday, and in the rubric of which I have reminded you to-day, lies its strength. According to that Act, our Church requires nothing from the clergy but assent to its general doctrine, — which is Christ or righteousness. According to the rubric, our Church excludes from its membership only those who are guilty of flagrant unrighteousness. And a Church which thus recognises the supreme im- portance of conduct need never die. I admit that clergymen often preach, and that laymen often speak, as if the Act had never been passed, as ^ See a sermon on " The Partial and the Perfect Self," in my 'Origin of Evil.' The individual is part of the organism of humanity, in which, if one member suffer, all the members suffer. The Laity. 39 if the rubric did not exist. But their ignorance does not alter facts. I admit that there are some things in the Articles and in our services incom- patible with the Act and with the rubric. But these could easily be modified or removed. I admit that it may be possible, instead of con- tinually broadening the Church until it becomes in all respects consistent with the Act and with the rubric, to keep on narrowing it in spite of both, till it would be no better than some wretched sect. And if this is done, believe me, the days of our Church are numbered. In the dark ages, the clergy could do what they liked, and the laity would do what they were bid. But times have changed. Now with the progress of education, now when the results of science and literary research are brought within the reach of the masses, a Church has no chance of living unless it appeals to the common sense, to the reason, to the moral instincts of mankind. And just in proportion as it makes this appeal, will it be strong and flourish and grow. Eighteousness is essential — of all things most essential — to the welfare of men. They can get on well enough 40 The Church of England. without any particular creed, they can get on well enough without any special ritual. But without righteousness they perish ! The Church, therefore, which insists most upon righteousness, and least upon other things, is the best Church. The Church which insists solely upon righteous- ness is the only Church that will not pass away. 41 The Athanasia7t Creed. IN what I am going to say to you this morning about the Athanasian Creed, I shall confine myself entirely t,o facts — facts which you can all, if you please, verify for yourselves. I. The Creed was not written by Athanasius. This is now admitted by all scholars, even the most orthodox, for the following reasons. (a) There is no trace of such a creed in any of the older MSS. of the works of Athanasius. (/3) Athanasius himself disclaims as superfluous the use of any creed except the Nicene. (7) There is no evidence of the existence of such a creed before, at any rate, the end of the eighth century. Its authorship has been attributed to a great 42 The Athanasian Creed. number of different writers ; but on this point nothing definite has been proved. Tlie Creed is not an original composition, but a compilation of sentences, taken chiefly from the writings of St Augustine. How the name of Athanasius came to be attached to it I do not know. One of our highest ecclesiastical authorities, Dr Swainson, declares that it was " an intentional and deliber- ate attempt to deceive and to procure for the Creed more respect than it would otherwise have obtained." This may be so ; for Athanasius always had a great reputation as an orthodox theologian — he has been called indeed the father of orthodoxy. But even if the Creed were pro- duced under his name in the honest conviction that it really represented his views, the fact remains that he was not its author. This does not, however, necessarily detract from its value. Por Athanasius himself lived after the time when, according to the orthodox view, inspiration had ceased, and he was therefore just as liable to error, just as far from being infallible, as any subsequent writer. The strongest objection to the Creed, ecclesi- The Athanasian Creed. 43 astically speaking, is the fact that it has never been sanctioned by any (Ecumenical Council. Indeed, of the four councils whose authority alone is recognised by the Church of England, the last two — those, viz., of Ephesus and Chalce- don — solemnly prohibited the composition of any other creed than the Nicene. In the minutes of the Council of Ephesus we find the following remarks, " The holy synod has determined that no person shall be allowed to bring forward or to write any other creed, besides that which was settled by the holy fathers who assembled in the city of Mcaea with the Holy Ghost. But those who shall dare to compose any other creed, or to exhibit and produce any such, if they are bishops or clergymen, they shall be deposed ; but if they are of the laity, they shall be anathematised." The Council of Chalcedon repeated the same prohibition. It is difficult to see how the recita- tion' of the Athanasian Creed can be reconciled with that submission which our Church professes to the authority of these great (Ecumenical Councils. Well, that is the first point. The Athanasian 44 The Athanasian Creed. Creed was not written by Athanasius; and its author, whoever he was, composed it in opposi- tion to the liighest ecclesiastical authority. II. The Athanasian Creed was written in Latin. In that language it is much simpler than it appears to be in English. The word person is a translation of the Latin word persona. Now persona has three meanings, (a) It stands first for an actor's mask. The word is derived, as you see, from jje?', through, and sonare, to sound. In ancient times actors wore masks, and these masks were called personam, because the actor's words sounded or were uttered through them. (/S) The word persona means the character which any one assumes, or the part which he plays, either on or off the stage. The personce, of an actor are the characters in his ripertoire. And just as the same actor assumes many characters upon the scenic stage, so we all have to play many parts in actual life. Every individual in existence has more than one persona. You, for example, are a member of a family ; that is one persona, it is one character in which you appear, one part which The Athaiiasian Creed. 45 you play : you are a member of a profession ; that is another persona: you are a member of a community; that is another persona: you are a member of a club, of a political party, of a railway company; these are other personce. Cicero somewhere says, " Ego sustineo tres per- sonas " — I am sustaining three characters, I ap- pear before you in a threefold attitude. Here you have a very simple and intelligible instance of " trinity in unity.'' (7) The word persona stands for one who appears in different characters— i.e., for an individual. The third meaning corresponds to that of our English word person. Now these are the only significations of the word persona. And it is manifest that in the Athanasian Creed we cannot understand the word in the first sense. No one supposes that the " persons " of the Trinity are actual, material masks. Nor can we understand the word in the third sense. For if the " persons " of the Trinity were three distinct individuals we should have three Gods. "We are therefore tied down to the second signification. The "persons" of the Trinity — according to the Athanasian Creed — are 46 The Athanasiaii Creed. the different characters or manners or ways in which the Deity appears to us. How far this view would have been acceptable to those of the fathers who wrote in Greek, I am not concerned now to inquire. They used the term inr6a-Ta(n