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 L I E) RAFLY 
 
 OF THE 
 U N I VLRSITY 
 or ILLINOIS
 
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 J» f
 
 A CHAEaE 
 
 DELIVERED TO THE 
 
 Ckrgq nni Clmrtliniiirtons nf tIjB §mmt nf |Bterhnrnugli, 
 
 AT HIS PRIMARY VISITATION, 
 October, 1872, 
 
 WILLIAM CONNOR MAGEE, D.D., 
 
 BISHOP OF PETERBOROUGH. 
 
 Published by Request. 
 
 LONDON : 
 SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & Co., STATIONERS' HALL C'OUKT. 
 
 BATH: R. E. PEACH, BRIDGE STREET. 
 LEICESTER : CROSSLEY & CLARKE, GALLOWTREE GATE. 
 
 1872.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PaRe. 
 
 General State of the Diocese 1 
 
 Kesidence of the Clergy 5 
 
 Superannuation Funds ... ... 6 
 
 Church Restoration ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 7 
 
 Church Building ... ... ... ... S 
 
 Fabric Funds and Parochial Trusts ... 9 
 
 Weekly Offertory 9 
 
 Daily Service 10 
 
 Church Festivals 11 
 
 Holy Communion 12 
 
 Attendance on Public Worship 14 
 
 Alienation of the Masses 15 
 
 Missionary Work of the Church 16 
 
 Confirmations ... 19 
 
 Elementary Education 20 
 
 Diocesan Inspection ... 23 
 
 Sunday Schools 25 
 
 Lay Agency 27 
 
 Diocesan Organization 29 
 
 Power of Self -Regulation for the Church 31 
 
 Church Reform 32 
 
 Three Distinctive Principles of our Chvirch 3(5 
 
 Danger to our Church from Three Different Directions 38 
 
 The Athanasian Creed 49 
 
 Appendix ... 73

 
 A CHARGE 
 
 &c. 
 
 REV. AND DEAR BRETHREN, 
 
 THE anxious sense of responsibility under which a Bishop 
 proceeds to deHver his primary Charge, is Hghtened for me 
 by the reflection that we do not meet as strangers. That we 
 might not so meet I have delayed this, my first visitation, 
 until the latest possible moment. I felt that, before attempting 
 to speak to you those words of exhortation or counsel, which you 
 expect to hear on such an occasion, I ought first to acquaint myself 
 thoroughly with the circumstances of the Diocese over which, in 
 God's providence, I have been called to preside. I ought to 
 know, not merely from the study of Diocesan returns and reports ; 
 but with the personal knowledge that could only come from over- 
 seeing and sharing in your labours, what were the special conditions 
 under which you are called to exercise your Ministry — what were 
 your special helps and hindrances — what things amongst us 
 specially needed to be strengthened or set in order — what to be 
 amended or restrained. 
 
 I wished, moreover, to win for my words such acceptance 
 with you as might come from your conviction, that I had, 
 at least, honestly striven to attain this knowledge of yourselves 
 and of your work. I wished that, when I should speak to 
 you of the high aims and awful responsibilities of your office, 
 I might speak as one who you knew had learned as your fellow 
 labourer, something too of its trials and its difficulties ; and, that, 
 when I should speak to you of any aims or plans of mine as 
 regards my own work amongst you, I might speak, not as one 
 who was producing untested theories which better acquaintance 
 with the Diocese might correct or refute; but as one whose
 
 2 A CHARGE. 
 
 aims had, by your help, been not only tested, but even In some 
 measure successfully wrought out. 
 
 I am thankful to know that in one respect, at least, these 
 expectations have been more than realised. Whatever may have 
 been my shortcomings, in fulfilling amongst you even my own 
 ideal of the office and work of a Bishop, I have found, on your part, 
 no lack of help towards accomphshing it. All the aid and encourage- 
 ment that the kindest and most trustful of welcomes, the heartiest 
 and most loyal co-operation in work and in council could give, I 
 have received at the hands both of the Clergy and of the Laity of this 
 Diocese, from the hour when first I entered it a stranger to almost 
 every one in it, until this moment when I can look around me and 
 find in every part of it those whom I have learned to esteem 
 very highly in love for their works sake, and for the help and 
 encouragement that they have given me in mine. 
 
 And I am bound to acknowledge, as I do most thankfully, 
 that this co-operation has been rendered me alike by Clergy 
 and Laity of all Church parties amongst us. In all attempts 
 that I have as yet made to draw you together in any common 
 work for the Church in this Diocese, it has been my happiness 
 to find myself surrounded by earnest and devoted men of all 
 schools of thought in our Church, who have shewn, and 
 who may even have more deeply learned by such united efforts, 
 that within the broad limits that our Church has traced for her 
 children, if there be ample room for divergence, there is even 
 ampler room for loving and brotherly co-operation. To be the 
 centre of all such united and uniting labours ; to draw together 
 more and more the severed ranks of those who, spite of all their 
 differences, are still fellow soldiers and fellow servants of the same 
 Lord, is one of the greatest privileges, as it should be one of the 
 most earnest aims of a Bishop. But how far he shall succeed in 
 so doing depends quite as much upon his Clergy as upon himself. 
 It rests with you, my Rev. Brethren, perhaps even more than with 
 me, to say how far this Diocese shall find in its Bishop, not merely 
 the legal overseer of so many individual Clergymen, but the leader 
 of a united band of Brethren. 
 
 The fact that we have thus worked together for nearly four 
 years warrants my laying before you, with some confidence, my 
 impressions as to the state of Church life and work in this Diocese. 
 
 That the experience of these four years should have impressed 
 me with a painful sense of how much yet needs to be done, how 
 much there is, not even yet attempted, how far beyond anything 
 we have yet attained to is the true standard of our life and work, 
 is only what all earnest work for God must teach us one and all. 
 Nevertheless I should be unjust alike to you and to those who
 
 A CHARGE. 3 
 
 have preceded me in my office here, if I were not to say that I am 
 quite as deeply impressed, not only with the sense of how much 
 has been and is being done amongst you, but of how great are 
 our powers and opportunities for effecting all that yet remains 
 to be done. 
 
 Here, as everywhere else, the Church is to be seen, aroused 
 from the cold lethargy of the last century, girding herself resolutely 
 and penitently to her two-fold task ; the redeeming, so far as may 
 be, the arrears of a too slothful past ; the providing for the urgent 
 needs of the present. Tied and bound as she has been, and still 
 in large measure is, by that weighty chain of cause and effect 
 which hnks old sins and neglects with present difficulties and 
 dangers ; the pitifulness of God's great mercy is visibly loosing her, 
 is filling her once more with an ever deepening sense of the 
 greatness of her mission and with strength to accomplish it. 
 Zeal and devotion are fast replacing sloth and formalism. The 
 Ministry of Christ's Church is more and more felt to be, what its 
 name implies, service, the most honourable and yet the most 
 laborious of all services, wherein they who labour are the servants of 
 men for Christ's sake. The Parish is regarded no longer as a mere 
 living, a Beneficium, yielding certain assured profits to its fortunate 
 possessor with the condition attached of certain light routine duties 
 which may be done by a hired and ill-paid deputy. It is more and 
 more felt to be a trust, the most solemn and awful of all trusts, even 
 " the cure and government of the souls" of men, of which account 
 must be given in the great day of judgment. The Church is no longer 
 the profession into which the Clergy enter at their ordination, but 
 the fellowship and communion of the faithful, into which Laity and 
 Clergy alike enter at their Baptism, and in which they have each 
 their respective rights and their respective duties too. Under the 
 influence of convictions such as these, the abuses of the past are 
 rapidly vanishing. The pluralists, the sinecurists, the absentee 
 parsons are becoming things of the past, and those who succeed 
 these are, for the most part, conscientious and diligent pastors, 
 who are setting themselves, with care and pains, to build up 
 again the waste places left them by their predecessors. 
 
 I do not say, would that I could say, that this is the 
 case in every Parish in this Diocese ; that we have not our 
 share of reHcs of the past ; that we have no neglected 
 parishes, no slothful nor incompetent Pastors. There are 
 such. There are parishes amongst us which are the disgrace 
 of the Diocese, and the despair of the Bishop : clergymen who 
 neither do their duty nor allow any one else to do it for them ; 
 who strain to the utmost those legal rights of our Parochial 
 system which were designed to protect the Clergyman i?i his 
 work, and not from it, and who contrive by virtue of these to 
 make, in spite of Parishioners or Bishop, their Parishes very 
 Gideons' fleeces, dry as summer dust, while all around them may
 
 4 A ' CHARGE. 
 
 be watered with the dews of reviving Hfe. There are such to be 
 seen amongst us ; just as on the other hand, there are to be seen 
 amongst the Laity, patrons who still regard the preferment they 
 possess not as a trust to provide a fitting Pastor for immortal 
 souls, but as a marketable piece of property to be sold to the 
 highest bidder, or bestowed on their nearest or neediest relative. 
 Nevertheless I can honestly testify that these are the exceptions 
 not the rule, that they are reprobated by the general conscience of 
 the Diocese and are passing away with the passing generation. 
 The standard, both of zeal and efficiency, on the part of the Clergy, 
 even their enemies being judges, and the standard of con- 
 scientious responsibihty on the part of Patrons, probably never 
 stood higher than it does now ; and this has been, and could only 
 have been, thus raised, by the higher aims and more earnest efforts 
 of the Clergy themselves. 
 
 And it is another token for good, that this higlT,er standard of 
 Clerical life and work is not only to be seen in our large towns, 
 where the quickened tide of all pubHc life, the rivalry of the sects, 
 the full blaze of publicity both for encouragement and for 
 criticism, the sympathy and counsel of many fellow labourers, 
 and above all the crying needs of the masses are ever stimulating 
 the Clergy to greater efforts ; but in the small country parishes with 
 which this Diocese abounds, where the Pastor leads, under all 
 the depressing influences of a contracted sphere of work, a scanty 
 population, a poor and illiterate congregation, the comparatively 
 obscure and uneventful hfe of a Country Parson. Here, where 
 the temptations to indolence or despondency are strongest, are to 
 be found, as I well know, some of the brightest and happiest 
 instances of diligent and successful Pastoral work. 
 
 More encouraging, however, even than the sight of such 
 labours as these, is the marked and even rapid success which in 
 so many instances seems to attend them. Few things have 
 struck me more, during the four years in which I have 
 watched the work of this Diocese, than the power which one 
 devoted Parish Priest, throwing himself heartily into the 
 Parochial system of our Church, possesses for the renovation of 
 his Parish. In more than one instance have I been permitted 
 to see the remarkable change which passes over some long 
 neglected Parish, when once the people have come to recognize in . 
 their new Pastor one who really cares for their souls. How soon, 
 in such a case, are those who have been alienated by indifference 
 won back by love. How soon do the restored Church, the 
 frequent and hearty Services, house to house visitation, earnest 
 and faithful (it need not be able or eloquent) preaching, coming 
 from the heart of the preacher and going straight to the heart of 
 the hearer, gather back the scattered flock that had forsaken the
 
 A CHARGE. 5 
 
 Church of their fathers, only because She seemed to have forsaken 
 them. Great, indeed, for good or for evil, is the power possessed 
 by the EngHsh Parish Priest. It may be doubted whether there 
 is at this moment any thing at all comparable to it in Christendom. 
 Certainly there is nothing like it in our own country. No Priesthood, 
 no Ministry amongst us possesses anything like the same oppor- 
 tunities for good, the same real influence with all classes, as that 
 which belongs to the Clergy of our Church if they will but use it 
 as they might. 
 
 How far we, in this Diocese, are rightly using the powers 
 and opportunities which are still ours, we may ascertain for 
 ourselves by certain practical tests, to which I now proceed to 
 invite your attention. 
 
 And first, and most obvious of these, is the extent to which Residence of 
 the Beneficed Clergy are resident on their cures. A non-resident the Clergy. 
 Incumbent is a contradiction in terms. An Incumbent is one 
 " Qui incumbit operi," who gives himself to the work of his 
 Ministry ; and that work is one which no Pastor can perform by 
 deputy. To him, and not to any other, is entrusted the cure 
 of souls in his Parish, with all of Pastoral care, of personal 
 watchfulness and diligence which these awful words imply. The 
 income arising from his Benefice is in no sense his property, it 
 is the Spiritual Trust Fund of the Parish, in which he has only a 
 life interest, conditioned on his performance of all the duties of 
 the Trust. To take, therefore, the greater part of this income, 
 and entirely to absent himself from the performance of these 
 duties, is a breach of trust, which is not in the least condoned 
 by his providing out of the remainder of the fund for a Curate, 
 who cannot be to the Parishioners all that the Incumbent ought 
 to be, and who, if he could, ought to receive all the income arising 
 from the Trust Fund, 
 
 On this point there is happily very little to be desired amongst 
 us. The number of Clergy, in this Diocese, non-resident and not 
 performing their duty, either from ill-health or any other cause, 
 amounts only to 2,Z- Of these lo are exempt from residence under 
 the provisions of the Pluralities Act ; having been inducted before 
 the year 1836. One only, I am thankful to say, is absent by 
 reason of sequestration; and the remaining 22 are absent, by 
 license from myself, mostly on account of ill-health. 
 
 On this latter reason for absence I wish to say a few words, 
 which will not, I trust, be taken amiss. 
 
 The law of our Church permits to the Incumbent, in addition 
 to the three months' absence to which he is entided without license, 
 such other temporary absence with license, for good and sufficient 
 cause, as should in reason be granted to the members of any 
 pubhc service ; but neither the law of our Church, nor the moral 
 obligations of the case permit of permanent absence on the score 
 of ill-health. The bodily infirmity of an Incumbent, which unfits
 
 A CHARGE. 
 
 Superannua- 
 tion Fund. 
 
 him for the more active duties of his Parish, does not necessarily 
 unfit him for guiding and governing, as he often most usefully 
 can, his Curates and his Parishioners. If, on the other hand, 
 the state of his health be such as to require permanent residence 
 in some other locality, or if he feel that the time has come when 
 even the superintendence of his Parish might better be intrusted 
 to younger and more vigorous hands ; the law now permits of 
 what, until lately, was impossible, his retiring upon a pension. 
 
 The principle of this law is manifestly a just one. It is 
 simply that principle which happily is more and more influencing 
 our Church legislation, namely, that a living, like every other public 
 office, is not a freehold but a trust, held only on condition of the 
 discharge of important duties; that, accordingly, considerations of the 
 efficiency of the service, that is to say of the interests involved in 
 the trusts, must outweigh those of the individual ; and that, therefore, 
 for Incumbents or for Bishops, just as for the Officer or the Civil 
 Servant, there should be the alternative of efficient performance 
 of duty, or just and considerate superannuation. Whether the 
 terms of this retirement for Clergymen are sufficiently just and con- 
 siderate; whether, for instance, in the case of small Incumbencies, 
 the retiring pension should not be one-half instead of one-third of 
 the whole income; whether, in every instance, the retiring 
 Incumbent should be required to forsake the house endeared to 
 him by the memories of long years of residence, are questions 
 deserving of serious consideration. As is also the question how 
 this superannuation may be supplemented in the cases, and they 
 are many, of livings too small to provide both a sufficient pension 
 for the retiring Clergyman and a sufficient income for his successor. 
 Such cases, in my opinion, ought to be met by a Parochial, or 
 better still, by a Diocesan Superannuation Fund. Certainly, 
 until some such provision be forthcoming, the Act should not be 
 made, as some have proposed to make it, compulsory. I cannot 
 but hope, however, that now that the principle of retirement is 
 established as against the Incumbent and in favour of the 
 Parishioners, they will on their part recognise the corresponding 
 principle of Lay provision for superannuation ; or, in other words, 
 that wherever the original Spiritual Trust Fund of a Parish is 
 clearly insufficient to provide a retiring pension, it may be 
 supplemented from the same source from which the fund itself 
 originally came — the gifts of the faithful Laity. 
 
 Church Res- 
 toration. 
 
 Next to the residence of the Clergy, the condition of their 
 Churches may be regarded as a fair test of the state of Church life 
 in any Diocese. As are the worshippers, such as a rule will be 
 the place in which they worship. The parish Church in half 
 ruinous decay, the Churcli-yard neglected and filthy, tell their 
 own tale of a corresponding neglect and spiritual decay of Pastor 
 or people, or of both. There can be but Httle fear of God, or love
 
 A CHARGE. 7 
 
 for His service, where His House is the worst cared for in. the 
 Parish. Or, again, the Church — not in a state of decay, but in a 
 state of most sohd and irreverent comfort, hideous with square 
 pews, where selfish respectabiUty ensconces itself and thrusts God's 
 poor into remote and dark corners; the Church where the 
 Holy Table, duly provided with lolling cushions for the elbows 
 of the infrequent celebrant, is hidden from the eyes of the 
 congregation by a towering pile of carpentry, which lifts into 
 prominence the person of the Minister who preaches his part of 
 the prayers to the people, and that of the Clerk who says their 
 part instead of them — tells its tale of worshippers, whose 
 highest idea of worship is that of their own edification, and for 
 whom their place of worship is, therefore, not so much God's 
 House, to be made beautiful in His honour, as Man's House, to 
 be made respectable for his credit and comfortable for his 
 convenience. But the Church — cleansed of these irreverent and 
 selfish disfigurements ; restored to the original beauty of a design 
 conceived when men built Churches, not for man's convenience, 
 but for God's glory ; free, from porch to Holy Table, for rich and 
 poor aHke; adorned with the loving, nay, the lavish gifts of 
 devout and loving hearts — tells its tale hkewise. It tells us of 
 worshippers who are being taught, were it only by the mute witness 
 of the place where they assemble, what the true worship of the 
 Sanctuary is ; that it is something more than the hearing of prayers 
 and sermons, something more even than real prayer and praise ; 
 that it is the assembling of Christ's people, to win by such gathering 
 in His name His promised presence in their midst : a presence 
 which makes the place where it is vouchsafed, the House of God, 
 the Holy House which they who own that presence love to make 
 beautiful, as the place wherein His honour dwells. 
 
 Judged by this test we have much to be thankful for. You 
 know how largely and how rapidly the work of Church Restoration 
 has progressed in this Diocese. Begun within the memory of 
 many now living, it has spread all over a Diocese in which the 
 number of large and beautiful Churches is so great as to make 
 Church Restoration at once most extensive and most costly ; and 
 in which, nevertheless, the greater number of our Churches have 
 been admirably restored, and that, too, in cases where the paucity 
 or the poverty of the parishioners, and the absence of any resident 
 squire, must have made the work, at first, appear almost hopeless. 
 Too much praise cannot be given to those who, in spite of such 
 local difficulties, have brought, as so many have brought, their 
 Church Restoration to a successful issue. 
 
 The total number of Churches restored or rebuilt, since the 
 date of my Consecration, has been 82, at a cost of voluntary con- 
 tributions, as nearly as I can ascertain, of ;^io9,ooo. ""^ 
 
 Of Church Building, as distinguished from Church Restoration, g^jiding. 
 * See Note (A.)
 
 8 A CHARGE. 
 
 there is not so much to be said, in a Diocese in which there are 
 few of those great and growing centres of population which so over- 
 tax the energies of the Church in other parts of the country. Only 
 in three of our towns, Leicester, Northampton, and Wellingborough, 
 is there at this moment any very pressing need for new Churches., 
 In Leicester, with its population of nearly 100,000 souls, the need 
 has been sorely felt. It is, however, I am happy to say, being to 
 a great degree overtaken. Within the last 10 years, during 
 which the population of Leicester has increased from 69,000 to very 
 nearly 100,000, four new Churches have been built and districts 
 attached to them, and a fifth will soon be completed. One 
 of these, the beautiful Church of S. Mark's, complete in all its 
 fittings, and with the addition of an admirable Parsonage, was 
 the munificent gift of two devoted members of our Church, whose 
 names will long live in the grateful memory of Leicester Churchmen.^ 
 The total amount of additional Church accommodation, thus 
 provided in Leicester, amounts to 3,600 sittings, all of them 
 happily free. The population of the new Parishes thus created 
 numbers 32,000. The total cost of these Churches, including the 
 value of sites either purchased or given, amounts to nearly 
 
 ;^40,000. 
 
 Northampton, with its smaller population of 43,000 souls, is 
 relatively better supplied with Churches. One new Church, S. 
 James, has recently been built and endowed, and its district 
 assigned in a poor and populous suburb. The Parish of S. 
 Edmunds, with its present population of 11,000 souls, rapidly 
 increasing, greatly needs at least one new Church and will, I trust, 
 ere long obtain it. Meanwhile, by the liberality of Churchmen 
 in the town and county of Northampton, an Iron Mission Church 
 has been procured, and provision has been made for the Services, 
 for three years, of two Mission Clergymen, whose labours, spite of 
 some most unforeseen and deplorable difficulties and hindrances, 
 I trust yet to see bearing good fruit. In Wellingborough, the 
 population of which has increased 50 per cent, since the last 
 census, and is still rapidly increasing, one new Church has been 
 built, and a second is needed, which I fully hope and expect soon 
 to see built. On this subject of Church Building I cannot help 
 expressing a doubt whether we, in this Diocese, are not still too 
 much disposed to make the building of a large and handsome 
 Church and the endowment of a district, the beginning and not 
 the end of our Church extension. The living Ministry and the 
 living Church that it may gather around it, should and might easily 
 precede the material fabric. Far better is it that the spiritual 
 wants of some growing neighbourhood should be met in the first 
 instance by the roughest and readiest contrivances we can devise at 
 the moment, than that they should be left unsupplied until we have 
 provided ourselves with the latest and most improved parochial 
 machinery. Far better that the congregation, gathered it may be 
 
 * William Perry Herrick;, Esq;, of Beaumanor, and his sister, the late Miss Herrick.
 
 A CHARGE. 9 
 
 at first in some hired room, swarm out into the School House and 
 wait eagerly for the Parish Church, than that the Parish Church 
 should be built in its completeness and then wait more than half 
 empty for the congregation yet to be gathered into it. 
 
 Our new and restored Churches, however, suggest one very Fabric Funds 
 serious practical consideration, namely, the preservation of their and Parochial 
 fabrics. If the work that we have done in this generation is not Trusts. 
 to be all done over again, with like cost and effort a century 
 hence, some means must be devised for preserving our Churches 
 from falling into the decay in which we found them. The abolition 
 of Church Rates, on the ground that our Church was not a 
 National Institution, by those who are now claiming possession 
 of all Church property on the ground that it is a National Institu- 
 tion, throws on Churchmen alone the preservation both of Church- 
 yard and of Church. The attempt to do this by a voluntary rate, 
 must in the long run prove a failure. A voluntary rate will last 
 just so long as each individual assessed under it pays his share. It 
 will be repudiated by all, so soon as any are called on to pay their 
 own share and that of certain defaulters besides. Sooner or later, 
 therefore, the voluntary rate will fail us as a reliable source of 
 income. And this again suggests the idea of Parochial or Diocesan 
 Trust Funds, for the institution of which a legal machinery 
 now exists. '" Such funds might be commenced by an annual or 
 quarterly offertory in each Parish, and would, it is to be hoped, be 
 from time to tune augmented by the gifts and bequests of pious 
 donors. Only in some such way as this, I am convinced, can we 
 make secure provision, not only for the maintenance of our 
 Church fabrics, but even for the annual expenses of Divine 
 Worship. 
 
 The whole subject, indeed, of Parochial and Diocesan finance Weekly- 
 is one that requires careful consideration, and it is one on which I Offertory- 
 hope to have the advice of our Diocesan Conference. One thing, 
 however, I can even now confidently say ; that Church finance, 
 whether Diocesan or Parochial, can never be in a satisfactory state 
 so long as it is not based in some measure on the Weekly Offertory. 
 So long as we neglect the simplest and easiest, as well as most 
 Scriptural mode of collecting the contributions both of poor and 
 rich ; so long as we depend solely on the spasmodic impulses of the 
 "eloquent appeal" of the charity sermon, or the mute importunity 
 of the subscription list ; so long our income for Church purposes 
 will be as irregular and as unreliable as the means we take to raise 
 it. Happily the absurd prejudice which associated the weekly 
 offertory with Popery is dying out. A Clergyman may now,_ in 
 most cases, venture to obey the directions of his Church, by reading 
 a few sentences from Scripture while his people give their alms, 
 without being accused of wishing thereby, in some mysterious way, 
 to lead his flock to Rome. Of course I do not counsel the 
 * See Note (B.)
 
 Daily Service. 
 
 lo A CHARGE. 
 
 sudden revival of the offertory in any case where such prejudices 
 still exist, nor, indeed, in any case without previous consultation 
 with the Parishioners, still less without what should always accom- 
 pany it, a full publication of all Parochial accounts. But I do 
 advise all of you to put before your people the obvious fitness and 
 advantages of this weekly almsgiving, and to introduce it in every 
 case in which you are satisfied that it may be introduced without 
 any violent shock to their feelings. I am persuaded that if you 
 do this, you will find your Parishioners not unreasonable in this 
 matter, and that the time has therefore come when, with very 
 general consent, we might attempt the revival of the weekly 
 offertory. 
 
 Church Restoration and Church Building, however, are but 
 means to an end. A far more searching test than these of our 
 Church work is to be found in the use that is made of our 
 Churches by Pastor and by people. What use our Church expects 
 her Ministers to make of these is clear. She requires every Curate, 
 " not being otherwise reasonably hindered," to say morning and 
 evening prayer, calling his people to worship with him. No other 
 meaning can be honestly given to this rubric, than that it contem- 
 plates daily prayer as the rule, and the " reasonable hindrance" as 
 the exception. Certainly it does not contemplate the House of Prayer 
 remaining closed from Sunday to Sunday. And yet this is too 
 often the case, and that, too, where the Minister is truly pious and 
 conscientious. For I should be sorry to think, that the want of 
 these qualifications in the Minister is the reason why out of 
 533 Churches, from which returns have been made to my enquiry 
 on this point, there is daily prayer in only 36 and no week-day 
 Service whatever in 281. '^ The truth is^ that to many this rule of 
 our Church has become practically obsolete; the reasonable 
 hindrance being, in their mind, the conviction that daily prayer, 
 however desirable 300 years ago, is unsuitable to the habits of our 
 age, and that with so many other things to do the Clergyman's 
 time might be better employed in his study or his parish. I cannot 
 think so. The age, so far from needing less, seems to me to need 
 more, perhaps, than any other the lesson taught us in the public 
 daily Service. For that Service is just the solemn protest of our 
 Church against one of the prevalent dangers of our too busy age, 
 the secularizing of our daily life. Her call to daily prayer is her 
 solemn testimony that there is something of greater value than 
 money — of more importance than business — even the one thing 
 needful, the better part which they who choose shall keep for ever. 
 And even for ourselves may not daily Service be a help to us 
 against a temptation which specially besets the most zealous and 
 the busiest of us, the secularizing of our very work for God, the 
 temptation to forget, in the midst of all our activity, that prayer, so 
 far from hindering, helps work, nay, is itself the highest and most 
 blessed of all work ? 
 
 * See Note (A.)
 
 A CHARGE. II 
 
 I am well aware of the serious difficulties which in many cases 
 lie in the way of reviving daily Service. The difficulties, for 
 instance, in our great Town Parishes, where the duties of our too 
 scanty staff of Clergy seem already more than they can find time 
 or strength to discharge. The difficulties in the thinly populated 
 Country Parishes, where it seems often almost hopeless to think of 
 gathering for daily prayer even the two or three who would make 
 a congregation. And I am, therefore, far from advising that daily 
 prayer should be at once attempted in every Church in this Diocese. 
 On the contrary, I should fear that in many cases, much contempt 
 and disregard of Holy things might be the result of such an 
 attempt. Still I do earnestly counsel the endeavour gradually to 
 raise our people and ourselves up to this higher standard of Church 
 life, and that you should show yourselves willing by much personal 
 sacrifice to help your Parishioners to reach it, should any of them 
 desire to do so. Certainly we should, one and all of us, take care 
 how we allow our congregations to think that going to Church on 
 Sundays is the highest religious privilege and duty of a Christian 
 man. One thing, at least, we might do in many cases with great 
 advantage. We might throw open our Churches every day in the 
 week for the private devotions of the people. Let those who may 
 often have no other spot for private prayer, find here a place where 
 they may enter in and speak alone with their "Father which 
 seeth in secret." I do not beheve that this privilege would be often 
 abused. I am sure that ere long it would be gratefully appreciated. 
 Another suggestion I would make to the Clergy of our larger 
 towns. The time is, I fear, as yet distant when the number of 
 worshippers at daily prayer will fill each of our Parish Churches. 
 Why should not our town Clergy, meanwhile, set apart a certain 
 number of their Churches for daily prayer, where, not one sohtary 
 Clergyman in turn, but many of them together should resort to 
 pray with the people assembled from all their Parishes ? Such 
 Services would be imposing and hearty, and would not have the 
 chilling and depressing effect which, spite of ourselves, we feel 
 when one solitary Minister officiates for a few worshippers thinly 
 scattered through a large building. 
 
 The Festivals of the Church, are not so frequently Church 
 observed amongst us as I yet trust to see them. The number Festivals. 
 of Churches, for instance, in which Ascension Day is not 
 observed amounts to 155.* The disuse into which this day 
 has so generally fallen is difficult to account for. It is not 
 open to the extraordinary charge against Saints' Days, that they 
 are Popish, for it relates to the Hfe of our Lord Himself It 
 teaches, as do all the other Festivals connected with His life, one 
 of the great dogmas of our Faith. It sets forth His presence in 
 Heaven and His continual intercession there for us. And our 
 Church has marked it accordingly with a special preface in her Com- 
 munion office. Whatever be the cause of its neglect, I earnestly 
 *See Note (A.)
 
 12 A CHARGE. 
 
 press on you the universal revival of its observance. The keeping 
 of the great days in the Christian year is by no means unimportant. 
 They bring visibly before the eyes of all, and especially of the 
 younger or more ignorant members of our flocks, the great facts in 
 the Hfe of Christ on which Christianity rests, and so help, more 
 than we are perhaps aware of, to prevent the distinctly Christian 
 element in our Faith from melting away into mere Deism. 
 
 But more important, infinitely, than even the frequent week-day 
 Services, or the observance of the greater Festivals, is the frequent 
 celebration of the Holy Communion. If daily prayer be the rule, fre- 
 quent Communion is assuredly the spirit and intent of our Church's 
 Communion office. When our Church requires every Parishioner 
 to Communicate at least three times in the year, she certainly 
 never intended that no one of them should have the power of 
 Communicating more frequently than this. This is the minimum • 
 of observance that she enjoins; it surely is not the maximum of 
 privilege that she provides for her children. It surely never was 
 her mind that their souls should be " strengthened and refreshed by 
 the Body and Blood of Christ" but three times in the year, as I 
 grieve to say that in some, though happily but few, of the Churches 
 in the Diocese is all that is permitted to the Parishioners by their 
 Pastor. How the Clergyman can expect for himself that he shall 
 have strength to do his Master's work, or bear his Master's Cross, 
 if he thus starve himself of the heavenly food which his Master has 
 provided for his soul's sustenance I cannot imagine. But I must 
 ask where he has obtained the right thus to starve his flock ? No 
 Parish Priest can be justified or excused in thus laying his Parish 
 for the greater part of the year under an interdict. Is it to be 
 wondered at that from such Parishes there should come complaints 
 of hindrances to the success of the Ministry, from the indifference 
 and deadness of the people, and their utter disregard for all Church 
 ordinances and privileges ? What else is to be expected when the 
 chiefest means of grace is so openly neglected and despised ; when 
 the highest act of Christian worship, the very centre and core of it 
 all, is made almost a work of supererogation, a kind of excrescence 
 on the ordinary Christian life, a special compliment in honour of 
 the great Festivals, but really no part of Christian worship proper ? 
 Can we be surprised if those who have set before them so low a 
 standard of Christian life and worship as this should fall below it still, 
 should even plead in defence of their contempt for Holy things, 
 their Pastor's open disparagement of the highest and holiest of them 
 all ? In most of our Churches, however, Holy Communion is now 
 administered monthly, and this is certainly the minimum of 
 Eucharistic privilege which should be provided in every Church. 
 I could wish it, as I doubt not many of you do, more frequent. 
 Weekly communion is that at which we should all of us aim, and 
 to which we' may yet hope to attain. It is not, any more than
 
 • 
 
 A CHARGE. 13 
 
 daily prayer, to be hastily introduced ; the people should rather 
 be brought even to hunger for it, than that it be cast down before 
 those who desire it not. But I trust we may yet see the time, and 
 that ere long, when weekly Communion shall be the rule, and not 
 as it is now the comparatively rare exception. 
 
 In some Churches in the Diocese, I observe that Evening Com- Evening 
 munions have been introduced, and, as I am informed, with the effect Communions, 
 of largely increasing the number of communicants, and that from a 
 class who could not attend an early celebration. I have never been 
 able to agree with those who regard Evening Communion as in itself 
 a sin, or even as a practice forbidden by our Church. I cannot set 
 aside the plain, and, to my mind, conclusive fact, that the first Com- 
 munion was celebrated at Eventide, by Him who assuredly would 
 not have done so had the certainty of His example being followed 
 involved the certainty of sin ! I cannot but see, moreover, that if 
 the evils which arose from evening Communion in the Church of 
 Corinth warn us of the danger the custom involves, it is clear 
 first, that it was a custom in Apostolic times, and, secondly, that 
 the inspired Apostle did not believe that the best way of preventing 
 these evils was absolutely to prohibit the custom. I believe, too, 
 that these evils are not so likely to occur in the case of the working 
 classes, who mostly attend evening Communion, and whose dinner 
 hour is generally some five or six hours before the Evening Service. 
 Nevertheless, the practice unquestionably has its dangerous side, 
 on which it needs to be guarded. It is open, in my mind, to this 
 great objection, that it takes too much of the element of self-denial 
 out of our religion, has too much the air of making the Service 
 of God as easy as possible, in order to suit the convenience of 
 every one, instead of requiring from every one the sacrifice of 
 personal ease and convenience for the sake of religious privilege. 
 Those who have Evening Communion should therefore observe 
 carefully whether they only attend it who really cannot come to 
 the Morning or early Morning Celebration. The moment that 
 they find that others than these do come ; that is to say, the 
 moment that they find that the Evening Communion is made to 
 suit the laziness of the rich, instead of the necessity of the poor, 
 they may be satisfied that they are doing as much harm as good 
 by continuing it. Another thing I would remind them of, that if 
 to meet the necessities of those who cannot attend an early cele- 
 bration they provide an evening one, they are equally bound to 
 meet the conscientious scruples of those, and they are many, who 
 cannot attend Noon and who object to Evening Communion, by 
 providing at least one early celebration in each month. 
 
 As regards the extent to which our people avail themselves Attendance on 
 of the means of grace now so largely provided for them, we may, I ^Q^ship.
 
 14 . > A CHARGE. 
 
 think, safely say that the proportion of those who do so is not 
 . below that in other Dioceses. That this, however, is everywhere 
 far below what it might and ought to be, we are all of us painfully 
 aware. We have to face the fact, as undeniable as it is alarming, 
 that large numbers of the people of this Christian country attend 
 no place of Christian Worship whatever. This " alienation of the 
 masses," not only from the Church, but from Christianity itself, is 
 doubtless the result not of one but of many causes, many of which 
 it is in our power to remedy, and some of which have been and 
 are being remedied. The physical impossibility of worshipping 
 while sufficient Church accommodation was not provided, is, as we 
 know, rapidly passing away, though the irreligious habits caused 
 by it will not be altered in the generation which has acquired 
 them. It is to the rising generation, and not to that actually 
 forced into irreligion, that we must look for our congregations of 
 the future ; and one of the most hopeful features in the present is 
 the large propordon of the young in our congregations, especially 
 in the towns. The pew system, too, that most ingenious and 
 successful of devices for keeping worshippers out of the Church, 
 and quenching all spirit of devotion within it ; a system which 
 carefully minimizes the amount of Church accommodation, by 
 permanently appropriating to a few families the area which might 
 otherwise be used in succession by more than one body of 
 worshippers, is fast coming to an end. Free and open sittings, 
 where the poor may take their seats, as Parishioners, with as good 
 a right and as ready a welcome as the rich, are rapidly dispelling 
 the notion, only too naturally prevalent amongst our working 
 classes, that the Church was the place for gentlefolks but not for 
 them ; while at the same time they allow of the same Church being 
 availed of by double and treble the number of worshippers possible 
 under the pew system. 
 
 With open sittings have come, and they could not very usefully 
 Varied Sendees ^"^^^ come sooner, more frequent and shorter Services. One great 
 practical hindrance to general worship in our Church lay in this, 
 that our Services had come to be used on the principle, that all the 
 worshippers would be free to attend at the same time, and all would 
 come in about the same condition of bodily strength, age, and 
 intelligence. Only on this principle can we justify the providing 
 of only two long Services for all alike, young and old, strong and 
 weak, masters and servants, ignorant and educated. Practically 
 the result has been to exclude from Church many who could not 
 come at the hours fixed for Divine Service, and to repel many 
 who either had not the bodily strength to sit them out, or the 
 spiritual culture to enjoy them. Whereas by holding more 
 frequent, shorter, and more varied Services, not only can all 
 worship in turn, but the shortened Services can be adapted to the 
 bodily strength, the leisure, and even the ages and spiritual attain- 
 ments of different classes of worshippers. This is absolutely
 
 A CHARGE. 
 
 15 
 
 essential to our winning the multitudes to our Churches. If we 
 would satisfy them all, we must do as our Master taught us to do, 
 when He fed the multitude by the hands of His disciples. We 
 must break up the great undistinguished masses into portions, 
 making them " sit down by companies," and then proceed to break 
 into convenient fragments the bread of life which He gives us to 
 distribute. In this respect we have gained great facilities by the 
 Church Legislation of this Session. The Act of Uniformity 
 Amendment Act enables us, not only to use a shortened week day 
 Service, but to use the different offices, so long amalgamated into 
 one, not only separately but in varying order. A third Service, 
 too, is now legal, if composed of words taken from the Prayer Book 
 or the Bible. Our Churches may be opened also for a Sermon, 
 not necessarily preceded nor followed by any Service. We hardly 
 yet realize the amount of flexibility and adaptability which these 
 most desirable changes have given to our Service Book. I look 
 forward to most beneficial results from them in an increasing 
 number of short and attractive Services, and of hearty worshippers 
 in our Churches. 
 
 Let us not forget, however, that v/ere all the defects of which Alienation of 
 I have spoken fully remedied, and many others beside, we should *^^^ Masses. 
 make a great mistake if we supposed that the alienation of the 
 masses would be thereby entirely overcome, or that it ever was or 
 could be in the power of the Church to overcome it. This phrase, 
 " The aUenation of the masses from the Church," like most current 
 and popular phrases, has its mixture of truth and falsehood. It is 
 so far true as it implies, that from causes plainly visible, and as 
 plainly remediable, the Church has lost, in times past, large 
 numbers of those who might have been now within her fold. But 
 it is false, so far as it implies, that even if She had retained these 
 there would not still remain large numbers alienated not only from 
 her, but from Christianity itself The accusers and defenders of 
 our Church are alike too apt to forget that it is as truly the nature 
 of Christianity to alienate as to attract ; that our religion is the 
 religion of Him who if He won the common people in crowds to 
 hear him gladly, yet full as often offended and alienated them by 
 His hard sayings, or His faithful rebukes. They forget that it is 
 the nature of truth to offend heresy, of holiness to offend sin, of 
 discipline to offend lawlessness. They forget how many of those 
 now " alienated" would, in days of stricter discipline and sterner 
 faithfulness, have been excommunicated, forbidden, that is, instead 
 of entreated to enter our Churches. I, for one, protest against the 
 quiet assumption — latent in so much of the patronising counsel, and 
 patent in so much of the insolent criticism that we are receiving 
 on all sides in this matter — that the sole blame for the alienation of 
 the masses, or of the educated classes, lies at the door of the 
 Church. I protest against the assumption that popularity is the 
 one only and sufficient test of truth or of worth. To such a test
 
 i6 A CHARGE. 
 
 even political and social science refuse to submit themselves. We 
 do not hold education proved worthless, because " the masses" care 
 so Httle for it as to need to be compelled to accept it for their 
 children. Nor do we call vaccination a failure, because numbers 
 are so " alienated" from it, that they had rather be imprisoned than 
 submit to it. On the contrary, we constantly act on the very 
 opposite principle, namely, that the value of many things is to be 
 estimated not in the direct, but in the inverse ratio of their popu- 
 larity, and that it is the fault not of those who proffer them, but of 
 those who reject them, if they are not universally accepted. But 
 not only should we protest against this assumption, that the World 
 is in no way to blame for its estrangement from the Church ; we 
 should guard against its influence on our own minds. We are in 
 great danger of being insensibly influenced by the prevailing notion 
 that the Church's worth is to be measured by her popularity. Such 
 a feeling is fraught with most serious evils, some of which may be 
 discerned amongst us only too plainly. It leads to moral cowardice 
 and faithlessness, to softening and suppression of the truth, to 
 relaxation of discipline, to wretched attempts at sensation preaching 
 or sensation Services. It leads, in short, to latitudinarianism on the 
 one hand, or superstition on the other, according as the multitude 
 we seek to please are the educated or the ignorant. No ! our 
 faults may be many and grievous, but one fault, worse than all of 
 them, would be to believe that in the Church's controversy with 
 the World all the fault is hers. Once let her persuade herself of 
 this, once let her regard it as her main duty to " conform herself to 
 the spirit of the age," and the prophetic spirit will have died out of 
 her. She will no longer " cry aloud and spare not," she will no 
 longer dare to speak the word of the Lord, " whether men will hear 
 or whether they will forbear." She will have taken her place in the 
 World's great vanity fair, to raise her voice thenceforth only in 
 crying for customers for her wares, and to shew her wisdom only in 
 skilfully adapting those wares to the ever varying fashions of the 
 hour. " An evil and a horrible thing" would then indeed have come 
 to pass, even that evil thing which filled the Prophet's soul of old 
 with fear for his Church and for his Country. The Prophets would 
 " prophesy falsely and the Priests bear rule by their means," and 
 what should we "do in the end thereof?" 
 
 Missionary But, if it be not, as most assuredly it is not, our duty merely to 
 
 Work of the please the masses, it is our duty, by every lawful means in our power, 
 to strive to win them. To do this we must not be content with 
 making " all things ready" for their reception. Now, as ever, the 
 invitation to the Marriage Supper must be pressed upon the 
 unwilling guests. Now, as ever, must the Church not only repeat 
 her L^ord's entreaty, " Come," but must go out into the highways 
 and byeways and " compel them to come in." She must beware of 
 the danger, I had almost said the sin, of forgetting that her work 
 
 Church.
 
 A CHARGE. 17 
 
 is everywhere and at all times essentially missionary work. Mis- 
 sionary not only, not mainly even, to the distant Heathen, but 
 missionary, as was her Lord's to the lost sheep of the Father's 
 House ; missionary as was the good shepherd's who could leave 
 the sheep in the security of the fold to seek the one lost one in the 
 wilderness ; missionary, as was that of her true prototype, who could 
 leave, in seeming forgetfulness, her hoarded treasure while she swept 
 diligently for the one lost coin until she found it. To neglect this 
 work of self-sacrificing love in the safer and easier work of guarding 
 what she already possesses, is not merely to neglect one half of her 
 divinely appointed task, but it is to imperil the failure of that other 
 part for which she has neglected this. 
 
 He who does not so truly love all the sheep committed to his 
 charge, as to care for and seek for those without the fold, will soon 
 lose, if he ever has possessed, the love that would bid him feed 
 and tend those within it ; may soon come even to acquiesce in 
 their straying from it one by one, provided only that the fold be 
 left, however empty, in his undisturbed possession. Certainly he 
 will never gain that vigorous toil-hardened strength, that keenness 
 of sight and quick watchfulness, that patient endurance, which 
 though they come from encountering the perils and fatigues of the 
 wilderness, are equally needed within the safer pastures at home. 
 It is in the free collisions of opinion, in the controversies that 
 bring us face to face, not with docile and respectful disciples, but 
 with resolute and even angry opponents, that we gain those 
 broader and yet clearer views of truth that fit us best to teach it 
 to our own people. It is in dealing with all the direst forms of 
 spiritual disease that lie outside the sanatorium of the Church, that 
 we gain that practised skill of the physician, which will make us 
 quick to discern and wise to treat the very first symptoms of the 
 like disease within its walls. Be sure of this, my dear and 
 Reverend Brethren, that to seek and save the lost is the best way 
 of learning how to feed and keep those who are in the way of 
 safety, and that he who is not a true missionary in his parish can 
 never be more than half a Pastor. 
 
 To this truth our Church is becoming thoroughly alive. No Church 
 more hopeful sign of her reviving life is to be seen than in the Missions, 
 revival and growth of Church Missions, as a distinct branch of 
 Church work. The conversion of sinners, the awakening and 
 arousing of the careless, the reclaiming of the outcast, first by the 
 ministry of the word, and then by close personal dealing of soul 
 with soul and heart with heart, in bringing them one by one, 
 lovingly, wisely, tenderly to Jesus, this is, thank God for it, the 
 work which year by year is enlisting and training a larger and still 
 larger band of practised and discipHned workers. It is a special 
 work and needs special gifts for its right performance. Gifts not 
 only of fervour and earnestness, but of unction, of spiritual insight, 
 yes, and let me add, of sound common sense. It has, like every
 
 1 8 A CHARGE. 
 
 work for God, its own special difficulties and dangers, but it has 
 also its own special encouragements and rewards. Assuredly it is 
 being largely blessed and owned of God. 
 
 It has been my privilege to take part in more than one such 
 mission in this Diocese, and I trust to take part in many more. 
 It is work in which one learns much, and of what I have learned 
 from it, there are two things which I specially desire to impress on 
 those of you who may be led to engage in it. First, that Church 
 Missions are not needed only in the great towns ; and, secondly, 
 that they are not needed only by the poorer classes. Our country 
 parishes need quite as much as town parishes the occasional 
 stirring of their comparatively undisturbed and possibly stagnant 
 life ; and most assuredly the rich and the respectable need quite as 
 much as the poor to be reminded that they have souls. " How 
 hardly shall they that have riches enter into the Kingdom of 
 Heaven," is as true now as it was when those words were first 
 spoken. The cares of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, 
 are as likely to choke the word now as they were when the sower 
 first went forth to sow his seed. And be it remembered, too, that 
 even as regards her power of winning and influencing the poor, the 
 Church commits a fatal mistake, if she gives them reason to think 
 that she regards them as sinners above all others, while dealing in 
 their sight, with timid and invidious tenderness, with the sins of the 
 rich and the great. Let her never forget that her Lord's words of 
 sharpest rebuke were for the most respectable people of His day ; 
 that His scourge of small cords was knotted and wielded in the 
 Temple, which wealth, not poverty, had turned from a House of 
 Prayer into a den of thieves. 
 
 Let me add a caution as to one other special danger attending 
 Mission work. The excitement which is often produced by the 
 earnest and powerful preaching of the word is too often not only 
 transitory, but perilous in its after re-action. It becomes, however, 
 a far more serious peril, if the preacher aim at producing it in 
 every case as an evidence of conversion ; still more so, if he fall 
 into the further error, of teaching his hearers to regard it 
 as evidence not only of conversion but of salvation. The 
 heresy, for I can give it no other name, of instantaneous salva- 
 tion ; the notion, that is, that a man is saved at once and for 
 ever the instant that he feels a firm persuasion that he is saved, is 
 visibly tainting some of our Mission work, and is tending, as all 
 doctrinal error ultimately tends, to loss of true spiritual power by 
 the degrading of what is spiritual into what is materially visible or 
 tangible. Once let physical emotion, or any other sensation or 
 experience in ourselves, be regarded as the indispensable test of 
 a man's salvation, and the getting up of these will become as mere 
 a piece of legal formalism as any one of those " works" which the 
 solifidian so energetically repudiates. In all our Mission work let 
 us be true to the teaching of our own Church, that every baptized
 
 A CHARGE. 19 
 
 soul is to be regarded as " a member of Christ," " a child of God" ; 
 not saved but brought into " a state of salvation," a state in which 
 conversion is therefore possible, is almost always necessary in order 
 that those who are in the way of being saved may attain at last 
 to that final salvation which comes to each one only in that day 
 when the Great Husbandman gathers His wheat into the safety of 
 His garner. 
 
 Another test of our Church life is the number of candidates for Confirmations. 
 Confirmation, A Confirmation tour at once reveals to a Bishop the 
 weak spots in his Diocese. When, for instance, of two adjacent 
 parishes he finds one, with a population of 4,000, sending 100 can- 
 didates, and another, with a population of 6,000, sending only 9, he 
 has no need to ask what manner of men the respective Incumbents 
 are. He knows at once, and only too well, what must be the 
 condition of the parishioners who enjoy the Ministry of the one 
 and of those who endure the Ministry of the other. In the main, 
 however. Confirmations in this Diocese give encouraging results. 
 The annual rate of candidates, for the whole Diocese, is a little 
 over 11,000, a number which might be, and I hope will yet be, 
 considerably increased, but which it must be remembered is 
 attained to in spite of the very considerable opposition and even 
 social persecution,' which the candidates have too often to 
 encounter. An opposition which, I confess, surprises me the more 
 inasmuch as it comes in many cases from those who claim to be 
 the special champions of civil and religious liberty, and who 
 are never weary of denouncing the bigotry and intolerance of 
 the Church. I have been much gratified by observing the pains 
 evidently taken by the Clergy and Churchwardens in the Churches 
 where I have held Confirmations, in rendering the Service im- 
 pressive and edifying, as also by the care taken in accompanying 
 the candidates to and from the Church, and in preserving them 
 from those temptations which in olden times must have made 
 Confirmations, in too many cases, a doubtful blessing. 
 
 The only wish that I have to express on this subject, is for a 
 more equal distribution of the candidates amongst the centres for 
 Confirmation. My great aim in multiplying these centres, as much 
 as possible, has been to prevent over crowding at any one of them, 
 more especially the crowding of country candidates into the towns. 
 It is manifest that this object will be entirely frustrated unless the 
 Clergy will agree to send their candidates, as much as possible, to 
 the nearest centre. A little previous conference and arrangement 
 would, I have no doubt, leave nothing to be desired in this respect. 
 
 Closely connected with the subject of Confirmation is that of Elementary 
 the Education of the young in our day schools and Sunday t-clucation. 
 schools. In the work of education our Diocese stands deservedly
 
 20 A CHARGE. 
 
 high, whether as regards the number, the suflEiciency, or the 
 efficiency of our elementary schools, a state of things for which, 
 beside the zealous labours of the Parochial Clergy, we are mainly 
 indebted to our well organised Boards of Education, and our 
 system of Diocesan inspection. 
 
 The statistics of our elementary education in this Diocese, so 
 far as I have been able to gather them from the returns to my 
 visitation enquiries, are as follows : — 
 
 Number of Church Schools 542, 
 
 Number of Scholars 46,410. 
 
 Schools enlarged or built since last visitation , 105. 
 
 Schools inspected by Government since passing 
 
 of Education Act 388. 
 
 Schools reported on by Government Inspector 276. 
 
 Accepted as Public Elementary Schools under 
 
 the Act 224. 
 
 A great effort, as you are aware, was made in the last two 
 years to enlarge and improve our school buildings in order to meet, 
 during the so called year of grace, the requirements of the Education 
 Act. The total amount of voluntary contributions expended on 
 our schools since last visitation, from this and other sources, has 
 amounted to ^31,317. The number of places where School 
 Boards have been estabHshed in the Diocese, amounts only to 
 nineteen. These statistics shew clearly how largely successful 
 have been the efforts of Churchmen in this Diocese to meet the 
 educational needs of our three Counties. 
 
 A brief review of the history of elementary education in the 
 past two years may help to define for us our present position and 
 our duties in the future. When, some two years ago, Parliament 
 proposed to deal anew with the subject of National education, it 
 was found that the Church had so zealously availed herself of the 
 opportunities given by former legislation, that nearly eighty per 
 cent, of the children under education were in her elementary 
 schools. This fact was naturally most distasteful to all who 
 were either politically or religiously hostile to our Church. It 
 is not, therefore, to be wondered at that these should have united in 
 a league, the main object of which was to deprive the Church of this 
 vantage ground. This association combined from the first two 
 distinct and even antagonistic parties, the Secularist and the 
 Religious ; the former desirous of eliminating religion altogether 
 from national education ; the latter desirous of retaining it so 
 far as might be consistent with the exclusion of the Church from 
 all share in giving it. Our Church schools were accordingly 
 exposed from the first to the united assaults of those who hated 
 the Church more than they loved Religion ; and of those who 
 hated Religion more than they hated the Church. The assault 
 took at first the form of a demand for what was called Non-Sec-
 
 A CHARGE. 21 
 
 tarian religious teaching. It was gravely, and I am sure most 
 honestly, proposed by the religious wing of the association to 
 discover, and to teach in the State Schools, some rudimentary form 
 of Christianity which should be common to all Christian Sects 
 and Churches in the country, and yet should have in it nothing 
 so distinctively Christian as seriously to offend those who 
 rejected Christanity altogether. This proposal had the remarkable 
 peculiarity of violating every one of the most cherished principles 
 of its proposers. In the first place it would have thrown on the 
 State — utterly unfit in the judgment of these very persons for 
 dealing with religious questions at all — the delicate and difficult 
 task of extracting from all the religious beliefs of the nation their 
 common element, and then of so defining this by Act of Parliament 
 as to make sure that this, and nothing else, should be taught in the 
 State school. In the next place, had the State succeeded in doing 
 this, the result would have been simply the establishment and endow- 
 ment of a new form of religion. A form which, moreover, would 
 have been thoroughly Sectarian as regards all those who might not 
 have happened to approve of it ; while as regards religious equality 
 it would have most unduly favoured those who believed least — and 
 who, therefore, might have all their religion taught in the State school 
 — over those who believed most and who, therefore, would have 
 hardly anything taught that they could call religion. In short this 
 earlier stage of the education controversy presented the extraor- 
 dinary spectacle of Sects denouncing Sectarianism ; Voluntaryists 
 proclaiming the failure of a voluntary system ; haters of establish- 
 ments demanding the establishment and endowment of a new State 
 religion ; and champions of religious liberty proposing to imprison 
 Churchmen for refusing to send their children to schools of which 
 they might conscientiously disapprove. 
 
 Happily for the nation, this extraordinary proposal to establish 
 and endow, what would have been at best but a Parliamentary 
 Deism, was found impracticable. It could not survive the attempt 
 to embody it in a legal form, in the shape of the memorable proviso 
 that in rate-supported schools no religious teaching should 
 be given for or against the tenets of any religious sect ! The force 
 of absurdity could go no further. The religious difficulty was 
 relegated by Parliament to School Boards, and the promoters of 
 Un-Sectarian education at last confessed that they had " ceased 
 to hunt after the phantom of an Un-Sectarian Religion." The 
 religious section of the League having thus failed in their 
 attempt to exclude the Church from all share in national education 
 by the invention of a new religion, the Secularists now claim to 
 try their plan of thrusting out Religion and the Church together. 
 They demand that in State schools no religious teaching whatever 
 shall be given, but that this be left entirely to the efforts of the 
 various religious denominations on Sundays; or, as they have 
 expressed it, they claim — the School for the State ; Religion for the 
 Churches.
 
 2 2 A CHARGE. 
 
 This proposal, in its naked irreligiousness, happily as yet 
 shocks the milid of the English nation, which still desires, by a 
 large majority, that religion of some kind shall be taught in our 
 schools, though unhappily it cannot decide what religion this shall 
 be. Accordingly anxious, honestly anxious, to preserve some 
 element of religion in national education, the Non-Sectarianists 
 have taken their stand upon the reading of the Bible in the Board 
 schools. The logic, however, of their position is not equal to its con- 
 scientiousness. The reading of the Bible in a rate supported school is 
 clearly a violation of the principle on which they oppose the teaching 
 of the Church Catechism in such a school ; namely, that no one shall 
 pay directly or indirectly for any religious teaching of which he 
 disapproves. The New Testament is rejected by the Jew. The 
 Authorised Version is disapproved of by the Roman CathoHc. The 
 whole of the Bible is rejected by the Secularist, who denounces it as 
 a collection of superstitious and immoral fables. On what principle 
 of justice, then, is the Churchman to be forbidden to teach the 
 Church Catechism to children of his own belief, out of respect 
 for the conscientious scruples of Dissenting rate-payers, and the 
 Dissenter allowed to teach the Bible to children of his belief in 
 spite of the conscientious scruples of the Roman CathoHc, or Jewish, 
 or Secularist rate-payer? It is obviously as just, or as unjust, to 
 teach the one as it is to teach the other, and certainly those who 
 insist, on the ground of religious equality, in excluding the one 
 will not long be able to insist on retaining the other. 
 
 Secularism, therefore, pure and simple, just because it is pure 
 and simple, that is to say, logical and consistent with itself, has a 
 tremendous advantage over its religious anti-Church allies in the 
 coming struggle for religious education. There are, in fact, but 
 three courses possible as regards the teaching of religion in the 
 schools of a State where more than one religion exists. One is 
 to teach all that you believe to that part of the school which will 
 receive it : this is the Denominational system with the Conscience 
 clause. The second is to teach a part only of what you believe 
 to the whole school : this is the now exploded " phantom of a Non- 
 Sectarian religion." The third is to teach no religion at all. The 
 second being by common consent abandoned, the Church, which 
 represents the first principle, stands almost alone, face to face with 
 Secularism, to fight the great battle of religious education in the 
 future. 
 
 Nor must we disguise from ourselves the fact that this conflict 
 will be severe. I cannot share, at least, the optimist views of those 
 who speak of our education difficulties as nearlyat an end ; they seem 
 to me only begining. I do not, in saying this, refer to the attempts 
 that will certainly be made in Parliament to alter the terms of the 
 Education Act to the pecuniary injury of our Church schools. These 
 may not and probably will not be successful, and even if successful, 
 I should not fear but that the increased energies of the Church
 
 A -CHARGE. 
 
 23 
 
 would more than compensate for any disabilities that might in this 
 way be imposed upon her. The danger that really threatens religious 
 education is one less direct and apparent, but for that reason all 
 the more formidable. It is the strong tendency towards Secularism, 
 in the practical working of the Education Act, both as regards 
 the Denominational and the Board schools. In the case of the 
 latter, Parliament having thrown the' religious difficulty on the 
 School Boards, they will certainly throw it, in their turn, on the 
 teachers. ReUgion being the one subject on which the peace 
 and harmony of the Board is hkely to be disturbed, after a 
 short period of religious contention, will, by common consent, be 
 avoided as much as possible. It will become the teacher's business 
 and not that of the Board. The teacher, however, will not be 
 slow to discover that the one subject which is likely to bring him 
 into collision with his employers is just the one subject which it in 
 no way pays him to teach. Naturally, therefore, he will be more and 
 more tempted to avoid this as much as possible, and if he teach it, 
 to do so in the most perfunctory manner possible. Such a position- 
 must be intolerable for every earnest man who has any definite 
 faith of his own. The result will necessarily be, that such men 
 will less and less seek the office of School teacher, and thus our 
 School Board system may gradually drift into Secularism; the 
 aim of the Secularist being more surely and more safely, because 
 more quietly, attained by eliminating religion from the mind of the 
 Schoolmaster, than by eliminating it from the programme of the 
 School. 
 
 On the other hand, as regards our own Church schools, it must 
 be remembered that religious teaching is now merely tolerated by 
 the State. It forms no essential part of the school programme, nor 
 of the examination by the Government Inspector ; nor does any 
 part of the income of the teacher, necessarily depend upon the 
 proficiency of the scholars in this part of their education. Naturally, 
 therefore, the teacher is tempted to regard religious instruction 
 as something that interferes with his real work; as at best 
 a work of supererogation, which he may do for the love of it, 
 but which it is directly his interest to disparage or neglect. 
 Doubtless this is a temptation which will be and has been 
 nobly resisted by many of our teachers, whose conscientious 
 attachment to their Church, and love of the faith she has trained 
 them in, we know and value as it deserves. Nevertheless it is a 
 temptation, even to those whom we may have trained, while- we 
 must remember that efforts will be made to prevent our training 
 any teachers hereafter. 
 
 Our real danger, therefore, in the future is this undercurrent Diocesan 
 to Secularism, both in Board and in Denominational schools, and Inspection, 
 our whole aim, therefore, should be to strengthen and deepen the 
 religious element in our Church schools. In order to do this, it is 
 clear that the Church must step in and fill the place which the
 
 2 4 A CHARGE. 
 
 State has vacated for her, in the matter of reHgious inspection. If 
 inspection be, as it confessedly is, an invaluable stimulus and 
 corrective in the secular part of school work, I cannot see why it 
 should not be so in the religious part of it too. I am quite aware 
 that there is that in religion, which no religious inspector can test, 
 and I am well aware too of the danger of knowledge of religious 
 facts being substituted for religion itself; but this is really an 
 incident, not of religious inspection, but of religious school teach- 
 ing itself, which must, in the main, consist in giving religious 
 knowledge whether of dogma, or precept, or history — a knowledge 
 which it is all important our children should possess, and which 
 may, like all other knowledge, be promoted by inspection. And, 
 if there is to be such inspection, all will agree that it is desirable 
 that it should be independent, authoritative, and, as far as possible, 
 uniform. Only so can it really strengthen the hands of the school 
 manager, by the help of a trained and impartial judgment and the 
 weight of a recognised and authorised office in the Church. In 
 this light I believe the greater part of the clergy and school 
 managers of this Diocese have come to regard the Diocesan 
 inspector. The old prejudice,which at first regarded him as some- 
 thing of a spy for the Education Board, or the Bishop, has almost 
 expired. He is now, for the most part, recognised for what he really 
 is, a valuable helper in the work of education, whose duty it is to 
 ascertain for the manager in the first place, far more than for any 
 one else, the real condition of his school. 
 
 I need not say to you, who know it better than I can, how 
 admirably the Diocesan Inspectors in this Diocese have done their 
 work — a work entirely, on their parts, a labour of love. We 
 cannot speak too gratefully of their zeal and self-denying efi"orts, 
 or of the impetus they have given to education. The question, 
 however, has arisen whether, in the present altered position of the 
 education question, voluntary Diocesan inspection may not usefully 
 be combined with or even replaced by paid inspection. This 
 question is one that certainly has two sides, and these have been 
 so recently discussed at length in our Conference, that there is no 
 need I should bring before you the arguments on the one side or 
 the other. The practical conclusion to which we have come seems 
 to me decidedly a wise one. We have, by the most liberal aid of 
 the Laity of the counties of Northampton and Leicester, established 
 a paid inspector for each of those counties, while in the county of 
 Rutland, from no lack of willingness to contribute the necessary 
 funds, but from unwillingness to disturb a very compact and 
 well ordered system of voluntary inspection, this latter system 
 is for the present retained. The two systems will thus be 
 tested side by side, not at all in antagonism, but in friendly 
 rivalry, and even with some degree of co-operation. A year hence 
 we shall all be better judges as to their respective merits. Mean- 
 while all, I think, will be of opinion that that system of inspection
 
 A CHARGE. 
 
 25 
 
 is best which best unites and directs the whole energies of the 
 Diocese in one well ordered and uniform scheme of religious train- 
 ing ; for we may depend upon it, that if we would not be beaten 
 in detail, we must work altogether in this matter. The isolated 
 Clergyman, in his own school, will find himself eventually unable 
 to cope with the hostile influences of which I have spoken, 
 and will need all the encouragement that can only come from 
 united Diocesan action. The words " My school," " My Church," 
 "My parish," are words that have worked wonders in their 
 time. They express the deep sense of personal responsibility, as 
 well as of real independence, which our parochial system generates : 
 but the words "Our schools," "Our churches," "Our parishes," 
 represent another idea not less important — one becoming more and 
 more important — namely, that of the union, the conference and the 
 co-operation which our Diocesan system was meant to foster. 
 
 Diocesan religious inspection, moreover, should be strengthened 
 by prize schemes for the children, and by giving to the inspector's 
 report some distinct value in the incomes of the teachers. But 
 infinitely more important even than these material helps to religious 
 education, will be the spirit which the Clergy may individually 
 throw into this work, not only by their own earnestness in it, but 
 by their sympathy with their teachers. There can be no greater 
 danger to religious teaching than that arising from estrangement, 
 or a sense of separate interests between the Clergy and the school 
 masters. And if the Education Act, by giving, as it does, a more 
 independent position, and a higher status to the teacher, rather tends 
 to this, the only way it can be met is by the Clergy cultivating 
 still kindlier and closer relations with their teachers — by joining, as 
 I am glad to see in some parts of this Diocese they are joining, 
 in their teachers' associations — by manifesting in this, and in all 
 other possible ways, a personal and friendly interest in their duties 
 and their trials — by shewing, in fact, that they regard the school 
 teacher as their valued fellow labourer in the great work of the 
 religious culture of their people. 
 
 One effect, however, of recent changes will be, I hope, to Sunday Schools 
 draw increased attention to our Sunday Schools, as a most important 
 element in the work of religious education. The Sunday school 
 has become the substitute, perhaps not altogether the most desir- 
 able substitute, for the pubHc catechising of the young as directed 
 by our Church. Public catechising by the Clergyman, really well 
 done and done in Church, is the best of all possible ways of 
 instructing our youth, and indirectly our adults, in the doctrines 
 of our Faith. Catechising, however, has become almost a lost art 
 amongst us ; and until it is renewed — until the order of catechists 
 shall be revived, and even then in our large towns where the 
 number of children are too great to allow of their being all cate- 
 chised in Church — the Sunday school is indispensable, and should, 
 therefore, be made as efficient as possible. That it may be so,
 
 26 A CHARGE. 
 
 however, it should never be forgotten that // is the substitute for 
 catechising in Church, and that its aim should be that of the 
 catechist, the instructing of the young in their Belief The Clergy- 
 man should regard the Sunday school teacher as his mouthpiece 
 for this purpose. The weakness of our Sunday school system has 
 been the notion, too commonly entertained, that a Sunday school 
 is a place where children come to say collects and hymns, and to 
 be talked to in a desultory way by any good people who may 
 volunteer for that purpose : in short that any one who is only 
 earnest and pious may make a Sunday school teacher, and may 
 teach very much what he or she pleases. The result is that the 
 minds of the unfortunate children, as they move from class to class 
 and teacher to teacher, must, if they take in any definite ideas at 
 all, become so many theological kaleidoscopes, filled with the many 
 coloured and many shaped scraps of religious thought which they 
 may have received from their successive instructors ; while the 
 Sunday school itself fails utterly to be what it ought to be, the 
 porch to the Church, the place where the young are moulded and 
 trained into intelligent attachment to their own faith. Nothing, 
 indeed, is more common than for children educated for years in 
 Church Sunday schools to pass over into Dissent, a thing simply 
 impossible had they been properly instructed in the reasons for 
 their own belief and trained to love, and to know why they loved, 
 their own Church. 
 
 The Clergyman who really wishes his Sunday school to tell 
 in his parish, should first choose and then teach his teachers. 
 These should meet him once a week, to prepare their subjects for 
 the coming Sunday. The lessons, not more than two at most 
 for the whole school, and forming a regular and carefully selected 
 course for the year, should be studied by the teachers under the 
 presidency of the Clergyman; the best mode of treating them 
 considered, the general hne of thought, the main proofs and illus- 
 trations agreed upon, so that a character should be distinctly 
 impressed on the whole teaching in the school. Some such plan, 
 carefully carried out, would soon make the teaching systematic, 
 definite, and really catechetical, instead of vague, desultory and 
 merely hortatory. The children thus trained would pass naturally 
 on to Confirmation and first Communion, and the Clergyman would 
 not find himself, as he now too often does, compelled to begin by 
 teaching in his Confirmation class the very first elements of the 
 faith to children that may have been for years in his own Sunday 
 school. Such a mode of teaching has, moreover, this indirect 
 advantage for the Clergyman, that it tells not only in the school, 
 but ultimately in the parish, where the Sunday school teachers 
 become a band of his disciples, reflecting his teaching and sup- 
 porting and extending his influence out of the school, as well as 
 in it. I earnestly counsel all of you, who may not yet have done 
 so, to form Sunday school teachers' classes, and I would suggest 
 that you would find great assistance in conducting these classes
 
 A CHARGE. 27 
 
 from the admirable publications of the London Smiday School 
 Institute. 
 
 The Sunday school teacher, however, is but one of the many Lay Agency, 
 forms of Lay help that the Clergyman may call to his aid. Dis- 
 trict Visitors, Scripture Readers, Bible Women, Deaconesses, Sister- 
 hoods, Guilds of Church Workers, are some amongst the various 
 forms in which the services of pious Laymen and Laywomen are 
 now being availed of for the work of the Church. No parish 
 should be without some one of these. For there is no parish, 
 however small, in which the Laity have not duties which are 
 properly theirs, and there are few parishes, however large, in which 
 the work of the Church might not be overtaken, if all the Laity who 
 could take their proper share of that work would do so. I cannot 
 say that this has been done in this Diocese at all to the extent to 
 which it might and I hope yet will be done. The number of 
 parishes in this Diocese in which there is no Lay agency of any 
 kind other than that of Sunday School Teachers, amounts, I regret 
 to see, to 388. 
 
 The reason for this deficiency of Lay help Hes, as it seems 
 to me, neither in the unwillingness of the Laity, as is some- 
 times alleged by the Clergy, nor in the jealousy of the Clergy, 
 as is sometimes alleged by the Laity, but in the want of a clearer 
 appreciation on both sides of the true functions of the Laity in the 
 Church of England. Our Church, on this point, presents a remark- 
 able contrast to Nonconformity, on the one hand, and to the 
 Church of Rome on the other. In each of these systems the Laity 
 have their clearly defined position. In the former it is that of Rule 
 and Government, in the latter that of duly authorised Service. 
 The member of a Nonconformist congregation discharges functions 
 which we think are properly those of the Presbyterate or the Epis- 
 copate. Nevertheless these are his known and recognised duties 
 for the discharge of which he is responsible to the communion to 
 which he belongs. The Laity of the Church of Rome, on the other 
 hand, have equally definite spheres of work in the many Frater- 
 nities, Guilds, Sisterhoods and minor orders of one kind or another • 
 in which, under the direct authority of their Church, they may 
 devote themselves to works of charity and piety. No such 
 definite positions are assigned to the Laity in our Church. She 
 has, indeed, carefully preserved the rights and privileges of the 
 three-fold Order of the Ministry. But she has not followed the 
 example of the Catholic Church in Her best days, by giving to the 
 Laity their full and lawful share of duties and of privileges. The 
 cause of this has been the excessive, and perhaps inevitable recoil 
 at the time of the Reformation from the abuses and excesses of the 
 Religious orders. The discredit attaching to these extended to all 
 those ecclesiastical organizations in which the Laity had for ages
 
 28 A CHARGE. 
 
 served the Cliurch. These came to be regarded, and are still 
 largely regarded, as Popish, instead of what they really are in their 
 origin and idea, Catholic and Primitive safeguards against Romish 
 exaggerations of the claims of the Priesthood ; asserting as they do 
 the right of the Laity to minister in Holy things. The consequence 
 has been, that when the Laity, sharing in the revival which has 
 visited our Church, sought their share in her work for God there 
 was no recognized place found for them in her ranks. Their offices 
 had either become altogether obsolete or had merged in those of 
 the Clergy. No wonder, then, that their first efforts should have 
 been irregular, sometimes even disorderly. No wonder, either, 
 that the Clergy looked at first askance on those who seemed to 
 them to be usurping their functions, whereas they were only 
 reclaiming, however irregularly, their own. This difficulty will 
 vanish, is vanishing, just in proportion as the true rights and func- 
 tions of the Clergy are more clearly recognized. Once let it be 
 fully seen that the Clergy have certain powers and duties, differing 
 from those of the Laity not in degree but in kind, and then it will 
 be seen that all beside these may lawfully be claimed by and 
 required of Laymen, without the least risk of their encroaching on 
 the office of the Clergyman. Lay Preaching, Lay Catechising, 
 Lay Evangelising in all its various forms. Lay Fraternities or 
 Associations for ministering to the sick, the poor, the ignorant, 
 with that special knowledge and skill which can only come from 
 the long gathered experience and traditions of a special organiza- 
 tion devoted to a special work, will be seen to be not only Lay 
 rights but, what is far more important. Lay duties. Only let all 
 these duties be performed decently and in order. Let the Laity 
 recognize their Parish Priest, as one set over them in the Lord, 
 not to rule them as so many subjects but to lead them as so many 
 fellow soldiers ; and let the Clergyman fearlessly enlist and press 
 into the Church's service every parishioner who shews any aptitude 
 or willingness for work; finding now the man for the office, and 
 now the office for the man and uniting still all such helpers, from 
 the least to the greatest, in one common parochial band of Church 
 workers, who shall feel themselves to be Church workers — that is 
 working for the Church and not merely as a favour or compliment 
 to him — and Lay help in the Church will soon be something very 
 different from the tentative, desultory, irregular thing it now too 
 often is. As to the names we may give to such Lay organizations ; 
 they matter very little. I have no love for the ecclesiastical 
 pedantry which would insist on reproducing in the 19th century 
 every institution that existed in the 12 th or the 4th or any other 
 century. The last thing I wish to see is our English Church 
 dressed for a Mediaeval or a Roman Masquerade. Call the 
 Christian men and women who help you what you and they please, 
 only get their help. The right name will soon attach itself, by a 
 process of natural selection, to the right thing. Once let us have
 
 A CHARGE. 
 
 29 
 
 the work and we shall soon find out the best name to give the 
 workers. 
 
 One step in this direction I have taken in introducing in 
 this Diocese the order of Lay Reader as approved of by the Convoca- 
 tion of our Province. The Reader is a Layman duly licensed by 
 the Bishop to discharge, under the direction of the Incumbent, what 
 may be called the office of the Evangelist. His duties are to seek 
 out the poor and sick in the parish and bring them to the know- 
 ledge of the Curate, to read the lessons in the parish Church, to 
 hold Mission Services, to preach at these, if he shews gifts for 
 preaching, in short, to perform all the duties of a Deacon, save 
 those which appertain to the stated ministry of the Word in the 
 Congregation and to the administration of the Sacraments. No 
 payment attaches to this office. It has, I am glad to say, been 
 undertaken by Laymen of means and position in this Diocese, and 
 I should be most thankful to see it spreading and taking deeper 
 root amongst us than it has hitherto done. I am satisfied that our 
 great town parishes can never be properly worked without a staff 
 of such Lay Evangelists. 
 
 This subject of the organization of Church work in our Diocesan 
 parishes naturally leads up to the wider one of Diocesan organiza- Organization, 
 tion. The Diocese and not the parish is the true unit of our 
 Church system. The Diocese did not succeed, it preceded, the 
 parish. The Missionary Bishop, who took possession in his 
 Master's name of the lands of the Heathen began by forming 
 his own 8toiK^o-6s or TrapotKia — for the Diocese was his parish— 
 within which the cure of all -souls was vested in him as chief 
 Pastor. From his seat or Cathedral he sent out his Mission 
 Clergy, to whom, as they succeeded in making converts, by 
 degrees parishes were assigned, in which they held from him 
 the cure of souls. But they were not, by this limitation of 
 their mission, severed from their original relation to the Bishop or 
 to one another as members of the same Diocese. They had their 
 place, as of right, in the Diocesan synod or great Council of the 
 Diocese, while those who remained at the central place 6f 
 government, the Cathedral, formed the lesser Council or Chapter 
 with whom the Bishop might take more frequent and intimate 
 counsel on the affairs of the Diocese. The idea of a Bishop 
 governing his Diocese by enforcing, by separate missives to his 
 Clergy, their obedience to a cut and dried code of laws, was as 
 little known to the Founders or the Reformers of our Church as it 
 was to primitive Antiquity. No such heavy charge of solitary and 
 isolated rule was imposed on us ; no such scattered and disorganized 
 existence was designed for you. 
 
 Such a Diocesan constitution was essential to the true life of the
 
 30 A CHARGE. 
 
 Church, not merely because it built up into one living body the 
 separate elements of her parochial life, but because it gave to the 
 one body thus formed that power of continuous and gradual change 
 which is but another word for growth, and which is the distinctive 
 characteristic and test of the living organism. It gave the Church 
 the power of discarding from her system whatever had become 
 obsolete, of adopting whatever had been proved to be valuable, 
 thus providing continually new bottles, as it were, for the new wine 
 that from time to time might ripen in her vineyards ; it gave her the 
 power, too, of checking the errors of individuals before they grew 
 into schisms, of reforming abuses before they spread and hardened 
 into general evil customs. In a word, it gave the Church that 
 power of self-adaptation to the changing circumstances of her day 
 without which no institution can long escape the danger of 
 perishing either of decay or of violent and fatal disruption. 
 
 The revival of this hfe of the Diocese has followed in the 
 natural order of things upon the revival of spiritual life in our 
 parishes. The Church in her restored vitality is developing her- 
 self according to the inner laws of her own being. First, the 
 revived Convocation, then Congresses, Synods, Conferences, are 
 all attesting the deeper and still deeper yearning of the Church 
 after those higher forms of unity which express while they pre- 
 serve her highest form of life. 
 
 You are all of you aware of what has been done in this 
 direction in our own Diocese. With the valuable and ready help 
 of the Rural Deans, who have thereby greatly added to the labours 
 of their office, the Clergy and Representative Laity of each parish 
 have been united in Ruridecanal Chapters and Conferences, for 
 the discussion of questions affecting the interest of the Church. 
 And from these Ruridecanal Conferences, by a system of elective 
 representation, which I think in the main commends itself to the 
 acceptance of the Diocese, has been formed our Diocesan Conference 
 of Clergy and Laity, which has just held its second Session. The 
 constitution of this Conference I do not propose now to discuss ; it 
 is doubtless capabable of amendment, as it has already received 
 most valuable amendments in its last Session. Other amendments 
 will probably come as we continue to work it. I only pause at this 
 point to thank you for the willingness you have, almost without 
 exception, shewn to give it, at my request, a fair trial. 
 
 I am satisfied, however, that as the system of Diocesan Con- 
 ferences takes root and grows amongst us, it will be recognized 
 more and more by all of us to be an absolute necessity of Church 
 life, not only as a centre of union both for Clergy and Laity and 
 an impulse to Church work, but as a means of eliciting and expres- 
 sing Church opinion. In most Dioceses in England a Bishop can 
 now obtain, on very short notice, through the Ruridecanal Con- 
 ferences the opinion of his Diocese on any Church question of
 
 A CHARGE, 
 
 31 
 
 importance or urgency. He is placed thus, for his own guidance 
 and support, thoroughly en rapport with all the Clergy and with the 
 leading Laity in the Diocese, while they, on the other hand, have 
 an opportunity of inlluencing by the expression of their sentiments 
 that public opinion by which we are more and more being 
 governed. In this latter respect the Conference is a step, and a 
 most important step, towards our attaining that power of self- 
 regulation and self-reform which seems to me by far the most 
 pressing need of our Church. Of all the many and diverse Church 
 reforms now advocated on all sides, the most needed is surely the 
 giving power to the Church to effect for herself anyone of these. 
 
 At present our relations to the State are such that an Act of Power of Self- 
 Parliament is required to effect the slightest change in any one of our t^e^church ^^'^ 
 rubrics. I leave you to imagine what would be the condition of 
 the army or the navy if, a code of regulations for all departments 
 of the Service having been drawn up 300 years ago, no power 
 had been given to the heads of it to alter even the least of these 
 without pELssing the proposed alteration through the ordeal of three 
 readings and a Committee in both Houses of Parliament. One 
 of two things would in that case certainly have happened. Either 
 no new regulations would ever have been made, and the Service 
 would, therefore, be now petrified in the condition in which it was 
 three hundred years since ; or else the existing regulations would 
 be strained, evaded, and set at defiance at every turn, to the utter 
 destruction of all discipline, and the ultimate disorganization of 
 the entire force. This is precisely our case. Our rubrics and 
 canons, drawn up three hundred years ago, are necessarily many of 
 them obsolete, and some of them actually hindrances to our 
 present requirements. The result has been a state at once of the 
 most vexatious restriction and the most perilous license ; the 
 laws of our Church fitting her at this moment like an ill-made 
 garment, tight where they should be loose and loose where they 
 should be tight. What we most need, therefore, is the power of 
 altering our canons and rubrics from time to time as we may find 
 necessary or expedient, subject of course to the consent of the 
 Crown in Council, and with the condition that any such change 
 shall not have been protested against by either House of 
 Parliament. 
 
 There is nothing whatever in the nature of our union with the 
 State to prevent our having this power. Nor can I think that 
 Parliament, which does not greatly covet Church legislation, would 
 be very unwiUing to grant us some such power ; subject, however, 
 to one very important condition. Parliament, we may be satisfied, 
 would never entrust, and I think ought not to entrust, such power 
 to any purely clerical body. The Laity should in some form 
 or other be given both voice and vote in any such internal 
 legislation. This being provided for, I cannot see that there 
 would be any serious difficulty or danger in granting to the
 
 32 A CHARGE. 
 
 Church some such right of self-regulation as she certainly so 
 greatly needs. In what way and on what conditions a place 
 should be provided for the Laity in our Church Councils — 
 whether, for instance, this should be, as many propose, by their 
 admission to a reformed Convocation ; or by a body of Lay repre- 
 sentatives, sitting at the same time with Convocation, as others 
 have proposed ; what again should be the qualifications of Laymen 
 for admission ; whether the Laity would submit to the revival of 
 Church discipline which certainly would be required in order to 
 define for purposes of legislation what a Church Layman really is — 
 these are questions far beyond the scope of such an address 
 as this. All that I care now to draw your attention to is the 
 growing feeHng among Churchmen of all parties for reform in this 
 direction, and the evident value accordingly of Diocesan Con- 
 ferences, as leading us up towards the solution of this question, 
 partly by the example they are setting of Lay and Clerical union 
 in Church Councils, but mainly by the strong body of Church 
 opinion which they are gradually forming in favour of this first 
 and most important of all Church Reforms. 
 
 Whenever this Reform shall have been effected, many another, 
 which now seems hopelessly remote, will follow speedily and 
 safely; for the Church is really far more anxious for her own improve- 
 ment than those are who, while denouncing all her defects, jealously 
 refuse her any power of remedying them. But until we do obtain 
 this power I doubt very much the use, or even the wisdom, of 
 urging any large schemes of Church Reform upon Parliament — 
 a body at present neither especially wiUing nor, perhaps, especially 
 fitted to deal with the details of such questions — but which, I 
 believe, would be honestly desirous to give effect to any measures 
 which had received the deliberate sanction of a really representative 
 Church Assembly. 
 
 Church Reform Meanwhile, we have ample opportunity given us for con- 
 
 sidering all manner of possible or impossible schemes of Church 
 Reform. Their name is legion. They range from the most cau- 
 tious and conservative improvements to the wildest and most 
 revolutionary changes ; while, as a rule, the wilder the change the 
 louder are its advocates in urging it as the sole and only panacea 
 which is to save the Church from impending ruin. The louder, 
 too, is their denunciation of the timidity or faithlessness of the rulers 
 of the Church, who hesitate at once to adopt all these contradictory 
 schemes of radical reform ; but who may, perhaps, be allowed to 
 plead in their own defence that nothing is easier than to be brave 
 and thorough going on paper, and that there may after all be as 
 much moral courage in resisting a popular cry, as in earning a 
 cheap popularity by adopting it. 
 
 I shall not attempt to discuss any one of these proposed 
 reforms, partly because the subject is far too large to be treated of
 
 A CHaRGM. 33 
 
 merely iiS one amongst a number of others ; but mainly because, as 
 I have already said, I am persuaded that our wisdom at this 
 moment would be to concentrate all our energies, not in carrying 
 this or that particular change, but in obtaining power to make 
 from time to time as many changes as we may find to be needed. 
 One or two general cautions, however, I should wish to suggest on 
 this subject, knowing as I do how deeply it occupies the minds of 
 all earnest Churchmen at this moment. 
 
 In the first place, then, I would suggest to you, that before you 
 join in any "movement" for abolishing or reforming any existing 
 institution in our Church, you be sure that you understand what 
 you are proposing to reform. Be quite sure that you have really 
 grasped its true idea and aim. It may be that you have not done 
 this, and that if you had you would have discovered that what it 
 really needed was neither abolition nor yet radical reform, but 
 simply revival ; simply the better and truer carrying out of the 
 purpose for which it was originally designed. 
 
 One of the questions most commonly asked by our root-and- 
 branch Church reformers respecting any of our institutions which 
 they desire to abolish, is " what is the use of it?" Such a question 
 cannot in truth be asked too often concerning all our institutions, 
 if only it be asked in the right spirit ; a spirit, not of impatient 
 and shallow captiousness, but of earnest and reverent inquiry. 
 Such inquiry might in more than one case result in the discovery 
 of uses that have been neglected, and purposes that have been 
 forgotten. It might result in the revival of old duties rather than 
 in the abolition of old offices ; in the finding and requiring of 
 work for income, and not in the cutting down of income just 
 to the amount of work that at a given moment is being done 
 for it. If we want an instance of the evil that may be done 
 by the merely destructive and barbarous hewing and cutting 
 down that too often passes for reform, we have it in the history 
 of our Cathedrals. These were reformed, as we know, at a time 
 when unhappily their efficiency was nearly at its lowest ebb ; 
 and their reform consisted too much in simply reducing their 
 incomes so as to provide exactly for the minimum of ser\ace 
 they were then rendering. Now that our Cathedrals are begin- 
 ning to reveal once more their capacities as great Diocesan 
 Institutions, we are beginning to see that full work might be 
 found for more than one of their suppressed offices, and fitting 
 use for more than one of their confiscated incomes. The 
 lesson is a weighty one for Church officers as well as for Church 
 reformers ; it is the old one that all history, and especially 
 CliTirch history, is ever teaching us. "Whosoever hath to him 
 shall be given, and whosoever hath not from him shall be taken 
 away even that which he seemeth to have." *' Church work 
 
 * Luke viii. 1 8. 
 
 D
 
 34 A CHARGE. 
 
 rightly done, is, after all, the truest Church defence and the only 
 safe guide to Church reform. 
 
 This thought suggests the second caution which I wish to offer 
 to you ; it is, to distrust all schemes of Church reform which do 
 not emanate from practical Church workers, and from workers too 
 in that particular department which they propose to reform. I 
 confess to but small respect for philosophical reformers, whether 
 in Church or in State, who evolve out of their inner conscious- 
 ness abstract and severely logical ideas of State or Church, as 
 they might or ought, in their opinion, to be, without the slightest 
 regard for the actual concrete present of either as it really exists. 
 There is no human institution which might not be conceived of as 
 in some respects other or even better than it is, and for which 
 it would not, therefore, be easy to sketch an ideal constitu- 
 tion quite free from all the defects that are to be found in it 
 in its present form. Your theoretical reformer has, therefore, 
 the double advantage that the evils of the system against which 
 he inveighs, are always visible and tangible ; while those of the 
 system he would substitute for it, are remote and invisible : he can 
 ahvays draw, therefore, upon facts for his censure, and upon his 
 imagination for his promises. The worker, on the other hand, 
 is a reformer, at once more modest and more useful. Know- 
 ing, as every good and honest workman must know, that the 
 blame of failure does not always lie with his implements ; learn- 
 ing as he does to leave a wide margin, in every scheme of 
 reform, for that disturbing element of which the theorist never 
 takes account — fallen human nature ; he contents himself, instead 
 of devising wide and sweeping changes, with simply seeking the 
 removal of those obstacles which from time to time impede his 
 daily task, or with devising from time to time such better ways of 
 doing that task as experience teaches him. 
 
 When such workers, devoted as they are to their work, tell us 
 of hindrances that they find in the doing of it and how tliey 
 think these might be removed, their suggestions are entitled 
 to all possible respect. They are sure to be practical, and will at 
 least have all the wisdom that comes from a single eye and 
 a humble heart. It is to such men that we owe all the real 
 reforms and improvements of late years, and it is to such alone, I 
 confess, that I look with any hope for wise improvement and 
 reform in the future. 
 
 And yet such reformers would, I doubt not, be the first to 
 admit the need for this other caution ; that before we attempt to 
 remove any seeming obstacle to our work, we should be quite 
 sure that it is an obstacle only, and not a restraint arising out of 
 the essential conditions of the work itself. It is a thought so 
 obvious as to be almost a truism, that what we regard as defects
 
 A CHARGE. 
 
 35 
 
 and imperfections, are often only the necessary limitations by 
 reason of which things are what they are, and not something else ; 
 and, therefore, that we cannot alter these without actually de- 
 stroying that of which they are a part, or changing it to something 
 essentially difierent. It is, of course, quite conceivable that this 
 something essentially different, may be infinitely superior to that 
 v/hich we would alter ; but we must clearly understand that 
 we cannot have both. We cannot have at one and the same time 
 the distinguishing advantages of two essentially different and 
 opposite systems — we cannot, for instance, be at once Episcopa- 
 lians and Presbyterians, Churchmen and Dissenters, Established 
 and Disestablished, any more than we can be at once rich and 
 poor, or young and old. 
 
 Simple and obvious as this consideration seems when stated, 
 it is just the one most frequently overlooked by many of our 
 Church reformers. These are constantly urging us to adopt some 
 practice which they see working well in some other religious body, 
 or to get rid of something in our own which they see that others 
 dispense withj without pausing to consider whether the change 
 they propose may not be most undesirable just for the very 
 reason that it suits other systems than our own. 
 
 One instance may sufhce to illustrate my meaning on this 
 point. Amongst the many Church reforms now advocated, few 
 have met with more general acceptance from Churchmen of the 
 most opposite parties, than that of the repeal of the Act of 
 Uniformity, on the ground that it unduly fetters the liberties 
 of the clergy of our Church. Probably few of those who ask 
 for this reform, have asked themselves whether they would 
 wish for the election and dismissal of the minister, or the imposi- 
 tion of forms of worship on the minority, by the majority of the 
 congregation. And yet these would be the inevitable results 
 of the repeal of the Act of Uniformity. 
 
 The minister of a Nonconformist congregation is, for the most 
 part, free to use what prayers he pleases, but on these two con- 
 ditions : first, that he shall have been previously chosen by the 
 congregation ; and, secondly, that if his prayers displease them 
 they are free to dismiss him. On the other hand, as regards the 
 congregation, the freedom to choose and dismiss their minister 
 exists only for the majority, the minority being only able to escape 
 ■from a minister or a worship they dislike by forming themselves 
 into a new body with another minister of their own choice. The 
 clergyman in our Church, on the contrary, is not chosen, and can- 
 not be dismissed by his parishioners ; but for that very reason he 
 is not free to impose on them any form of worship that he may 
 prefer. The same law that makes him independent of them, re- 
 fuses to make them dependent on him for the manner of their 
 devotions. Give him the power of praying for them as he pleases, 
 and they, or rather the majority of them, will not be slow in claim- 
 
 D 2
 
 36 A CHARGE. 
 
 ing their right to choose whom they please to pray for them. 
 Which of these two systems, that of written law, or that of per- 
 sonal rule, best secures the liberties of the clergy and of the 
 parishioners, is a question that seems to me to admit of very little 
 doubt. But it is quite certain, that we must have one or other of 
 these, and cannot have both ; and that, therefore, until we have 
 made up our minds to adopt for our rule of worship the will of 
 the majority of the congregation with all its consequences, it is 
 absurd to exclaim against its only possible alternative, the rule 
 of written and uniform law. The principle which I have thus 
 endeavoured to illustrate is one of very wide application, and 
 would, if fairly applied, dispose of more than one plausible scheme 
 of Cliurch reform, as inconsistent with the principles of our Church 
 and inadmissible, therefore, for all loyal Churchmen. Loyalty, 
 hearty, unswerving, and intelligent loyally to the distinctive prin- 
 ciples of our Church is the one essential condition of all wise 
 Church reform, and of all true Church work. 
 
 Three dis- What, then, we next proceed to consider, are those distinctive 
 
 tinctive Prm- principles of our Church, which in Church reform as in Church 
 
 *^^ Churcl°^^ work and in Church defence, we should ever keep steadfastly in 
 
 view. They are, as it appears to me, these three : Our Church is 
 
 first Catholic ; secondly. National ; thirdly, Established. 
 
 First. — Our Church is Catholic. She is a true branch — in this 
 country the true branch — of the Church Catholic, holding the pure 
 Word of God, the Faith, and the Sacraments, and, with these, 
 mission and authority from Christ to preach the Word and minister 
 the Sacraments " according to His ordinance in all things neces- 
 sary to the same." As such she claims to stand distinguished ; on 
 the one hand, from all those congregations which, though con- 
 sisting of " faithful," i.e.^ of Christian men, have not as she 
 believes, any authority from Christ for their self-originated 
 and therefore schismatical organizations; and, on the other 
 hand, from the Roman Communion, which though retaining the 
 succession of its ministry from Christ, having, as she believes, 
 corrupted both the Faith and the Sacraments, and having cer- 
 tainly no authority or mission in this realm of England, is in 
 her judgment at once heretical and schismatically intrusive. 
 
 Secondly. — Our Church is a National Church. By this we 
 do not mean either that she is Established by the State, or that 
 she includes within her pale the majority of the Nation. Neither 
 of these circumstances constitutes her a Church National. On the 
 contrary, these are only recognitions of the fact — existing quite 
 independently of, and long antecedent to, any such recognition — 
 that she is National. Her claim to this title arises simply from the 
 fact that she is in England the true branch of the Church Catholic. 
 It dates from the hour in which the first Christian missionary to
 
 A CHARGE. 37 
 
 this country admitted into Christ's kingdom by Baptism his first 
 converts. From that hour there existed in this country that visi- 
 ble kingdom of Christ, to which every member of this nation owes 
 spiritual allegiance, and which, on the other hand, owes to every 
 member of this nation loving and devoted service. All of numbers, 
 of wealth, of State recognition that have accrued to the Church of 
 England since then, are of the accidents, not of the essence, of her 
 life. Deprive her of these to-morrow; disestabhsh, disendow her ; 
 diminish her numbers to those of the smallest of existing sects ; 
 and she would still be as truly the Church of England as the 
 hundred and twenty in the Upper Chamber were the Church of 
 Jerusalem, or the despised Christians of the Catacombs the Church 
 of Rome. 
 
 As a Church National, moreover, our Church of England has 
 her inherent and inalienable rights and powers, as distinguished 
 from those of the Church Catholic of which she is a part. The 
 visible Catholic Church is not a despotism, it is a Confederation 
 of independent States, " a republic," as it has been called, " com- 
 posed of many monarchies," in which each State, that is to say, 
 each National Church, has, if we may so speak, its own distinct 
 and independent State rights. What these rights are, as defined 
 by our own Church, we shall presently have occasion to consider : 
 enough if I observe at present that it was the assertion of these, 
 far m.ore than of any particular doctrines, which was of the 
 essence of the Reformation. Doctrinally the Reformation was 
 the correction of certain corruptions of faith and discipline. But 
 ecclesiastically it was the assertion of the right of a Church 
 National to make such reforms for herself; and it is in this 
 assertion of her rights as a Church National that there lies the 
 true and lawful Protestantism of the Church of England. 
 
 Thirdly. — Our Church is not only Catholic and National, she 
 is also Established by Law : that is to say, she has entered into 
 certain definite relations with the State, involving on the part 
 of the State a certain amount of recognition and of control; 
 on the part of the Church, a certain amount of subjection to 
 the State, and of legally defined duties to every individual of 
 the nation. On the precise terms of this Concordat between 
 Church and State, it is not necessary for me to dwell. They 
 are obviously variable, and indeed have been varied from time 
 to time by mutual consent, while the union itself is terminable 
 at the will of either party. All I now wish to say is that this union 
 must necessarily exercise a most powerful influence upon the 
 character, not only of the State, but of the Church. Those 
 accordingly who desire to maintain it, as the vast majority of 
 Churchmen do, must be prepared to do so on the ground that this 
 influence is beneficial not only to the State but to the Church ; 
 unless indeed they are prepared to admit, what would certainly be 
 fatal to the very idea of such an union, that it can only be main-
 
 38 A CHARGE. 
 
 tained by sacrificing tlie interests of the State to those of the 
 Church, or the interests of the Church to those of the State. 
 Granting, therefore — nay, asserting most strenuously — that the 
 Estabhshment of the Church by the State is of infinitely less value 
 than either the Catholicity or the Nationality of the Church, and 
 should therefore be sacrificed without hesitation if it ever really 
 threatened either of these ; we must, if we support it intelligently 
 and consistently as Churchmen, do so on the ground, that in the 
 main it tends to preserve both her Catholicity and her Nationality ; 
 and that its abohtion might even seriously endanger both the one 
 and the other. 
 
 Assuming, then, that these three characteristics of our Church — 
 her Catholicity, her Nationality, and her union with the State — are 
 all three to be maintained as contributing, though in differing 
 degrees, to her healthy and vigorous life, it is clear that it is 
 only by the combination of these elements in their due propor- 
 tions, that her life can be preserved in the highest degree of 
 vigour. 
 Danger to our Necessarily, therefore, our Church is always exposed to danger 
 th' H^ff-^^ from three different directions. From the exaggeration of the 
 directions" Catholic element in her constitution, and the consequent weaken- 
 ing of the National ; from the exaggeration of the National element 
 and the weakening of the Catholic ; from the exaggeration of 
 the Secular and the weakening of both the Catholic and the 
 National elements. The danger from the first of these is 
 Ultra'montanism, which is the denial of all National Church life 
 and independence. The danger from the second is Sectarianism, 
 which is the denial of all Catholic order and unity. The danger 
 from the third is Erastianism, which is the denial both of the 
 Divine order of the Catholic, and of the true life and independence 
 of the National Church. 
 
 The antagonism between these three elements in our Church may 
 be traced through all her history. No great controversy whether 
 as to doctrine, ritual, or Church politics, has ever arisen which 
 did not evoke or rather which was not really caused by it ; and no 
 such controversy will ever be either wisely or safely determined 
 without taking into account, not only the existence of these ele- 
 ments, but their respective value and importance in the mixed 
 and balanced constitution of our Church. Perhaps at no period 
 in her history has this antagonism been more distinctly visible 
 than at this moment, and probably, never was she, therefore, at 
 once so strong and so weak ; so strong with the strength of great 
 principles, powerfully felt and wrought out on all sides, so weak 
 with the weakness which comes from the strife of great principles 
 in the very crisis of their struggle — a crisis which must end either 
 in disruption or in a renewed and deeper harmony. 
 
 It may help us, therefore, at once to a calmer and a juster esti-
 
 A CHARGE. 
 
 39 
 
 mate both of our dangers and duties at this moment, if we trace a 
 httle more closely the working and the tendency of these three 
 elements in our Church's life. 
 
 Catholicism, as I have said, untempered by NationaHsm, tends Exaggeration 
 to Ultramontanism. It does so not by its assertion that ^' ^^e Catholic 
 there is one visible Holy Catholic Church — this rightly under- element, 
 stood is the surest safeguard against Ultramontanism — but 
 by its assertion of a false centre for the unity of the Church 
 Catholic : by placing it, not in the possession by many independent 
 Churches of the fourfold unity of the Faith, the Word, the Minis- 
 try, and the Sacraments, but in the existence of one central and 
 visible government, having the right and the power to decide in- 
 fallibly, for all Churches, all questions submitted for its decision. 
 Once this theory is fully embraced, it leads on by rapid steps 
 from General Councils infallibly defining the Faith to general 
 Councils defining the all but essential accessories to the Faith, 
 Discipline and Ritual. Indeed, if there be anywhere a living infal- 
 lible authority, there is no reason why these questions should be 
 exempted from its decision any more than questions of the Faith. 
 Naturally, therefore, those who insist upon the infallibility of the 
 central authority grow more and more intolerant of any attempts 
 at independence on the part of national Churches — whose eccentric 
 freedom of action sorely disturbs their ideal of Catholic govern- 
 ment — and more and more anxious to extend on every side the 
 limits of infallible authority. On the other hand, as the Church 
 spreads more and more, the difficulties of governing it prac- 
 tically in all details by general Councils increase ; and so do the 
 obvious advantages, indeed the all but necessity, of still more 
 centralising the infallible authority ; until at last the hving voice of 
 the Church representative contracts itself into the voice of one 
 living man, claiming to have been decreed infallible by the voice of 
 an infallible General Council. Thus the Catholic, who starts from 
 the assumption that a living and infallible authority is essential to 
 the unity of the Catholic Church, is driven step by step, to what 
 is practically the denial of all true Catholicity, Ultramontane 
 Romanism. 
 
 This tendency of a false theory of Catholicity is only too 
 plainly illustrated amongst us at this moment. The party in our 
 Church which claims, I must say invidiously, the exclusive 
 title of Catholic, asserts this theory in its extremest form. 
 I think I do no injustice to the leaders of this school of 
 thought, when I state their theory thus. There is and must ever 
 be one visible Holy and Catholic Church. To this Church our 
 Lord has by Flis promise guaranteed infallibility. The voice of 
 this Church, whether uttered in her General Councils or in the 
 form of Catholic consent, is infallible, and, therefore, necessarily 
 binding on all particular or local churches. So much so that any
 
 40 A CHARGE. 
 
 law of any local Church which contravenes the decrees of any 
 General Council, or sets aside any practice or rite which has 
 ever obtained Catholic assent is ipso facto invalid, and not only 
 may but ought to be disregarded and disobeyed by every true 
 churchman whose allegiance to his own Church is subordinate to 
 his prior duty of allegiance to the Church Catholic. Consistently 
 with this theory, those who hold it avow their desire to restore in 
 our Church all pre- Reformation doctrines and usages, mediceval 
 Christianity being for them that form both of doctrine and of 
 ritual which most exactly fulfils the conditions of Catholic consent. 
 Naturally and necessarily, too, the Reformation which disowned 
 and rejected many both of these doctrines and practices, is the 
 object of their bitterest dislike, a dislike which no words of theirs 
 seem strong enough to express. Naturally, and necessarily, too, 
 such persons resent all claim on behalf of their own Church for 
 that right to make these changes of which the Reformation was 
 the assertion. This in their view is " the frightful and sterile blunder 
 of Anglicanism " ; and those who maintain it and who show them- 
 selves loyal to the Prayer-book as it is, are held up to scorn as 
 " mere Anglicans," "inteUectual Cretins who cannot count beyond 
 thirty-nine " ; while the deliberate defiance of the plainest rules of 
 our Church, the adoption of ceremonies which she has not only 
 not enjoined but has positively forbidden, the teaching of 
 doctrines which not even those who teach them can so much 
 as pretend are not rejected by her, are gloried in as " revivals 
 of Catholic principles" and "assertions of Catholic privileges." 
 Naturally, too, those who claim this "Catholic heritage" of doctrine 
 and discipline resort to the Church of Rome, as that portion of 
 Christendom which has most faithfully preserved all mediaeval 
 traditions, as their teacher and their model on these points. And 
 this not only on those broader questions of doctrine or ritual in 
 which it is alleged that Rome has but preserved the traditions of 
 primitive antiquity, but in those for which no such claim can 
 possibly be made. No one can deny — the most advanced 
 members of the party do not themselves care to deny — that it 
 is, in its latest development, marked by a close and even a servile 
 imitation of all the minutest details of Roman Catholic ceremo- 
 nial ; a hankering after Romish theology and Romish forms of 
 private devotion ; an almost childish affectation of all the most 
 Romish modes of thought and forms of expression; in short, as they 
 themselves express it, by a " deferential" "Latinising" of our Church; 
 and that to such an extent that one might not unfairly suppose that 
 the one aim of such persons is to make themselves, in all respects, 
 as like Romish priests as possible, and their greatest happiness to be 
 mistaken for such ; and that tlie accusation which they would most 
 keenly resent would be, that they were capable of supposing that 
 on any point whatever on which the Church of England differs 
 from that of Rome, she can by any possibility be in the right
 
 A CHARGE. 41 
 
 One phase, however, of this movement there is, which cannot 
 justly be accused of tending to Romanism ; it is one wliich in the 
 Church of Rome would not be tolerated for an instant : it is 
 the liberty which is now claimed for each individual priest to carry 
 out his own idea of what is Catholic in doctrine or ritual, without 
 the slightest regard either to the written law or the living autho- 
 rities of his own Church The calmness with which this demand 
 is made for what is termed the right of the Catholic priesthood, 
 but which is simply a license never so much as heard of before in 
 any Church in Christendom, would be almost ludicrous were it not 
 most seriously mischievous. 
 
 A youthful priest — let us suppose — who has but recently passed 
 an examination for Holy Orders, in which he may not perhaps 
 have displayed any very profound acquaintance with Theology or 
 Church history, finds himself the fortunate possessor of a living, 
 into which he has been inducted on the express condition that 
 he " assents to, and will use the form prescribed in the Book of 
 Common Prayer and none other, except so far as it may be 
 ordered by lawful authority." No sooner has he been duly 
 inducted, than he proceeds to set up in his Church the Roman 
 Mass in all its minutest details, of which lights, vestments, and 
 incense are but a small part ; he duly performs all the genu- 
 flexions, crossings, and prostrations prescribed in the last edition of 
 his ' Directorium,' or his ' Ritual for the Altar,' adding to these from 
 time to time, such " beautiful symbolisms," as may either occur to 
 his own mind, or may have been recommended by some corres- 
 pondent in his Church newspaper, as the last " correct thing " in 
 Ritualism. His parishioners, naturally indignant at this deliberate 
 Romanising of their Church and their Services — in which they, per- 
 haps, not altogether erroneously, believe that they have some rights, 
 legal and ecclesiastical — remonstrate with him. He informs them 
 in reply, that he is a priest of the Holy Catholic Church, and that 
 as such, it is his privilege to teach and direct them in all things, 
 and their privilege to obey him. They complain to the Bishop, 
 who, on writing to the Incumbent to inquire into the truth of their 
 complaints, receives in reply the information that all that has 
 been complained of is quite true ; that the writer does not in- 
 tend to alter his proceedings in the very least particular, what- 
 ever his Bishop may say to the contrary ; that as to his promise 
 "reverently to obey his Ordinary," that only means, that he is to 
 obey such directions as the Bishop can enforce in a Court of 
 Law ; and that, at any rate, whatever obedience over and above 
 this he might be disposed to pay to a really " Catholic-minded " 
 and " properly appointed Bishop," he cannot possibly pay to one 
 who is only "the nominee of the Prime Minister," and has neither 
 " the learning nor the piety," nor " the Catholic sympathies " which 
 alone would justify the obedience of a truly Catholic priest. Does 
 his Bishop, in reply, remind him that he is not asking him to
 
 42 A CHARGE. 
 
 obey his directions only, but to obey the plain and clear law of 
 the Church of England, his answer is, either that the Church 
 of England has not expressly forbidden the practices in question, 
 and that he is entitled to do or say anything in public service, 
 which is not expressly forbidden; or, if this cannot be alleged, 
 he asserts that these practices have been forbidden only in the 
 Court of the Metropolitan, whose judgment he cannot possibly 
 acknowledge, inasmuch as he sits there " accompanied by a lay 
 assessor," or else by the Committee of the Privy Council, whose 
 decisions are for him simply so much waste-paper. Or, should, 
 what he is doing be a clear violation of some Rubric, the 
 purport of which has never been so much as questioned, the 
 answer is still forthcoming, that the Rubrics being only those 
 of a local church, he must decline to obey them, until they can 
 be proved to him not to be opposed to the only law he acknow- 
 ledges, viz., that of the Church Catholic of which he is a priest — 
 a condition, which, as he is himself to be the sole judge of the 
 sufficiency of the proof, does not, certainly, much restrain his 
 liberty of action, and which amounts, in plain English, to the 
 declaration, that he means to do precisely what he pleases, and 
 that for him, the promise — " I will use the form prescribed in the 
 Book of Common-Prayer, and none other" — means, "I will not 
 use that form, and I will use any other that may commend it- 
 self to my judgment, or strike my fancy." Finally, if his Bishop, 
 having exhausted every effort of remonstrance, counsel, and even 
 of entreaty, proceed, at last, to enforce the law and discipline 
 of the Church of which he is a Chief Pastor, he is met by an 
 indignant cry of tyranny and persecution, and fierce accusations 
 of attempting to stamp out the liberties of the Catholic priest- 
 hood ; followed, probably, by a denunciation of the hateful union 
 between Church and State, by virtue of which, nevertheless, and 
 of the legal status it gives him, this much aggrieved priest alone 
 possesses the legal power to defy his Bishop. 
 
 It would be to waste your time and my own, to spend any words 
 in refuting this most extraordinary theory of the absolute indepen- 
 dence of the Presbyterate of our Church ; for it is clear that this 
 phase, at least, of the so called Catholic movement, can be but a 
 passing one. No Church, no organized body whatever, could long 
 continue to exist which tolerated such chaotic license as this. But 
 we may be allowed to remind those who are thus defying all law 
 and order whatsoever, that the almost certain result of their proceed- 
 ings will be the loss of those very liberties which they are thus 
 abusing. Whether this movement end as its more advanced leaders 
 desire, in reconciliation with Rome, that is to say, in submission to 
 the Papacy, — for Rome will have us on her terms, and not on ours, 
 — or in the disestablishment for which they are clamouring, that is 
 to say, in the substitution for the fixed laws to which the clergy are 
 now subject, the ever varying rule of the will of the majority enforced
 
 A CHARGE. 43 
 
 in ■ State Courts, on the ground of contract, far more stringently 
 than our present laws are, on the ground of correction and discip- 
 line — or, as is far the most probable, in some sharp and sweeping 
 reform of our present laws ecclesiastical, which will give to the 
 laity of the Church new powers for enforcing their wishes in 
 matters of ritual and discipline ; in whichever of these results the 
 present lawlessness ends, it will be one which will leave very little 
 of their present freedom to the parochial clergy of our Church. 
 Perhaps the more impatient spirits amongst us, now fretting under 
 Episcopal tyranny and bondage to the State, might then discover 
 that the tyranny of a congregation is worse than that of a Bishop ; 
 that law is the only true safeguard of freedom ; and, that, they were, 
 not, after all, the best friends of the liberties of the clergy, who 
 encouraged them to disobey, but those who exhorted them to 
 obey the laws of their own Church. 
 
 There is no need, however, to discuss the truth of that theory of 
 Catholicity by which these lawless proceedings are justified,* inas- 
 much as it is expressly and formally repudiated by our Church. t 
 So far from asserting the infallibility of general councils, she 
 categorically denies it. " General Councils, she declares, may err, 
 and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining unto God." 
 So far from admitting her subjection to their decrees " in things 
 necessary to salvation," she declares that these " have neither 
 strength nor authority," unless it may be declared (/. e. clearly 
 shown) that they be " taken out of Holy Scripture." % Even the 
 Creeds she receives, not because they have the authority of 
 Councils nor yet of Catholic consent, but because " they may be 
 proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture," § the one 
 only absolutely infallible and supreme authority in matters of 
 faith which she recognizes. In matters of ritual her assertion 
 of her own independent and inherent authority is even more 
 clear and emphatic. " Every particular or National Church," she 
 maintains, " hath authority to ordain, change, or abolish cere- 
 monies or rites of the Church " {i.e. of the Church Catholic), 
 " ordained only by man's authority, so that all things be done to 
 edifying." II And in her Preface "Of ceremonies, why some be 
 abolished and some retained," she still more clearly and fully 
 asserts this right, while defining the conditions under which she 
 exercises it. One rule, and one only, she there lays down, as that 
 which is to regulate "all things done in the Church," in " ceremo- 
 nials of human institution," and that is " edification." Whatever 
 ceremonies, even though " originally of goodly intent and purpose 
 devised," may have ceased to fulfil this end, she claims the right to 
 change, or, if needful, " to put away." This is a claim which goes 
 
 * See Note (C). t See Note (D). X Article xxi. 
 
 § Article viii. II Article xxxiv.
 
 44 ' A CHARGE, 
 
 to the root of the theory of Cathohc assent as the rule of ritual ; 
 the most ancient and universal of rites — not having the authority of 
 Holy Writ for its perpetual observance — becoming on this principle 
 a mere NeJmshtaii^^ a thing to be utterly abolished, if it should have 
 become at any time so "abused to error or superstition" as that 
 " the abuse could not be taken away, the thing itself remaining." 
 The unity of the Catholic Church, therefore, clearly, according to the 
 teaching of our Church, does not consist either in a central 
 infallible authority or in the* identity of any rites or ceremonies 
 not expressly enjoined in wScripture ; but in the common pos- 
 session by many independent Churches of the four unities — of the 
 Faith, the Word, the Sacraments, and the divinely appointed 
 Ministry. To reject or to lose any one of these would be to 
 sever herself from the Church Catholic. But short of this, she 
 claims most clearly and unhesitatingly the right of every Church 
 National to self-government and self-reform in all things pertaining 
 to edification. And it was in the vindication for her of this her 
 truly " Catholic heritage " of self-rule, subject only to the authority 
 of God's word, that the Reformation was of such vital importance 
 to our Church. 
 
 It were a bold thing to say that on every point in which that 
 great change made her to differ from the Church of Rome, she 
 carried away absolutely all the truth and Rome only all the error. 
 But one great vital truth the Reformation did re-assert for her 
 distinctly and precisely, and that was the freedom and indepen- 
 dence of National Churches ; delivering her thereby thoroughly 
 and, let us hope, for ever, from the " grasp of the dead hand " of 
 the past, to which the so-called Catholic theory would once more 
 subject her,' to the utter paralyzing of her free national life, and 
 to the practical denial of the continued presence in her of her 
 Lord. 
 
 caggeration But all-important as is this assertion of the inherent rights of 
 he National the Church National, it may in its turn be pushed too far. We 
 element. ,^^^ easily pass from denying the infallible authority of general 
 Councils to denying them any authority, i.e. aiicforitas, or weight 
 whatsoever; or, from denying that an absolutely Catholic assent 
 can ever be so ascertained as to be dogmatically binding, to for- 
 getting that the general adoption of any practice by the undivided 
 Church must always be a strong presumption in its favour, not to 
 be set aside, but on the still stronger ground of that Sahis popiili^ 
 which, as we have seen, is the siiprema lex of our Church. Or we 
 may so exalt the idea of the Church National as to lose sight of, 
 or even to deny, the existence of the visible Church Catholic. We 
 may, in our recoil from the error of asserting a false centre of 
 unity for the Catholic Church, pass into the extreme of asserting 
 
 * 2 Kings xviii. 4, 
 
 ia&i
 
 A CHARGE. 45 
 
 that it has no objective or historical unity whatever, and that the 
 only unity of Christ's Church is the inward unity of the Spirit 
 which joins individual Christians with each other and with Him. 
 Churches being on this theory simply those external forms into 
 which the religion of individual Christians has, as it were, acci- 
 dentally crystalhzed, can claim, as of right, no authority over their 
 members, who, in the freedom of the Spirit, must have the right to 
 recast their own organization, to form themselves into entirely new 
 bodies, as often they may think proper. Every such body, though 
 but of yesterday, has an equal right to the title and the autho- 
 rity of a Church. Nay, each individual member of such a body 
 is on this theory quite competent in his turn to set up a new and 
 equally true Church for himself. Thus the assertion of the 
 independence of National Churches, unlimited by the recognition 
 of visible CathoHc unity, ends in the very " dissidence of dissent ; " 
 the stream of Catholic order and doctrine sinking at last into 
 the sands of the merest Individuahsm. 
 
 Such are, as it seems to me, the logical results of the denial of 
 the existence of the visible Church CathoHc. And though we 
 should be far from charging those amongst us who hold this theory 
 with aiming at the results which logically flow from it, we cannot 
 but recognize in their history tendencies in that direction. We 
 can see these, I think, in the depreciation of those two links with 
 the Church Catholic which appertain most to the idea of the cor- 
 porate life of the Church, viz., the Ministry and the Sacraments; 
 in the denial of the Apostolic succession of the one and in the 
 understating, if not the denial, of the grace and efficacy of the 
 latter ; in the undue depreciation of all the objective side of our 
 religion, as " merely outward form and ceremony," and the undue 
 exaltation of all that is purely subjective ; in the lightly regarding 
 the sin of Schism, provided only that the schismatic retain those 
 particular doctrines which subjectively unite him with Evangelical 
 Churchmen ; in the fraternising with dissenting communities, as 
 " other Churches," and holding out to them as communities, what 
 God forbid we should deny them as individuals, the " right hand of 
 fellowship;" in an impatience of that fulness of doctrinal statement 
 and breadth of comprehensiveness in which consists the true doc- 
 trinal Catholicity of our Church, and in a consequent readiness to 
 narrow within the limits of one school of thought the broad stream 
 of Catholic doctrine which, just because it is full, must touch both 
 its banks almost to overflowing. In a word, a tendency towards 
 Sectarianism within the Church, and towards alliance with Sec- 
 tarianism outside it, warns us that our Church is exposed to 
 dangers from ultra-Puritanism as well as from ultra-Catholicism. 
 
 Once more ; we recognize the existence amongst us of a third Exaperatior 
 School of thought that, like the other two, asserts a great truth ^^ ^/^^^^"t 
 which yet, without its due limits, leads to perilous error. Eras-
 
 46 A CHARGE. 
 
 tianism is but the exaggeration of the truth — never to be forgotten, 
 never more needing to be remembered than at this moment — that 
 the State as well as the Church is a Divine thing ; is truly, if in a 
 lower degree, and for lower purposes, ordained of God; and has 
 therefore its true and real relations to Him and to His Diviner 
 kingdom the Church. That it is not, therefore, to be regarded, as 
 extreme High Churchmen and Dissenters agree in regarding it, as 
 an unclean thing from which the Church is to stand utterly apart 
 in holy separation, with which any union whatever on her part is 
 nothing short of spiritual adultery; but rather as, in its ideal at least, 
 a holy thing truly consecrated to God with which a union on the part 
 of the Church is not adultery, but lawful and sanctifying alliance ; 
 and that so far from such union being necessarily the degradation or 
 the injury of either, it may be the highest form of existence for 
 both. For one I am not ashamed to confess that I believe this 
 theory — ^nay, that I believe it to be one most wholesome and 
 necessary for these times, as the strongest protest against that 
 most pernicious modern heresy, that the Secular and the Spiritual 
 are things not only separable, but always to be separated. In 
 their protest against this error, I am persuaded that the so called 
 Erastians do the Church a great service. 
 
 But this assertion of the Divine origin, and therefore of the 
 religious idea of the State needs to be tempered by the strongest 
 and clearest assertion of the Divine origin and authority, the 
 Divine rights and privileges of the Church. If not, there is the 
 danger, nay the certainty of the Church coming to be regarded as 
 simply a function of the State — its mere creature and servant — to 
 be moulded and remoulded at its pleasure. The clergyman, on this 
 theory, is simply a kind of moral policeman, hired by the State to 
 keep the people moral and obedient to the law, and whose duty it 
 is accordingly to tell them from Sunday to Sunday to be good. 
 His doctrines however, that is to say his reasons why people 
 should be good, must be subject to alteration from time to time as 
 the State may think best, just as she might alter the weapons or 
 accoutrements of her soldiers. While as to his holding his office 
 and his right to teach by virtue of a higher authority than that of 
 the State — as to his being an officer of a mightier and higher 
 kingdom than any earthly one, having not only eternal and 
 unchangeable truth to teach and supernatural gifts and graces to 
 convey, but having the rights and privileges of this kingdom 
 to maintain against any earthly power whatever — this is regarded 
 as sacerdotal bigotry and presumption, only to be tolerated by a 
 liberal State so far as it is restrained by law within limits that 
 make it practically harmless, but which must from time to time be 
 warned of the peril of asserting itself too plainly, and reminded 
 that if the Church is to remain established she must learn to be 
 less dogmatic, and to put herself more in accord with the " liberal 
 and enlightened spirit of the age."
 
 A CHARGE. 47 
 
 And though we should be as far as possible from charging all 
 of this School of thought with aiming at these results, yet we 
 cannot fail to see amongst them tendencies in this direction — 
 demands, for instance, for the abolition of all doctrinal tests for 
 admission to the ministry of our Church ; complaints of the too 
 dogmatic character of our Creeds ; proposals for the admission of 
 any one and every one, schismatic, heretic, or unbeliever to her 
 pulpits, or to a share in councils which are to regulate the 
 minutest details of her worship ; attempts at still further relaxing her 
 discipline, already far too lax ; all put forward under the attractive 
 and doubtless the honest plea of preserving the Estabhshment by 
 widening the basis of our Church, and so making her more truly 
 national. All these seem to me tainted with the same error, and 
 fraught with the sam.e peril ; the error of supposing that our 
 Church is national only because she is Established, the peril of 
 destroying her really national character without saving her Esta- 
 blishment. I say without saving her Establishment, for after all 
 this exists because she is believed to have some definite truth to 
 teach to the nation. Once let it be clearly understood that she 
 really has nothing particular to say to the people, while any 
 other religious body might say that nothing with just as much 
 authority as she possesses — that in short she has only to tell them 
 that it does not much matter what they believe, provided that they 
 only beheve that it does not matter — and the English people will 
 have less common-sense than they are generally given credit for, 
 if they fail to draw the conclusion that it is hardly worth while 
 maintaining an Establishment for this. 
 
 Thus we see how each of these three parties in our Church, 
 working out its own distinctive principle to its logical conclusion, 
 ends actually in destroying the very thing for which it is contend- 
 ing. The Catholic, aiming at the unity of Catholic consent, ends 
 in the wildest licence of private judgment. The Protestant, 
 aiming at the independence of the National Church, ends by re- 
 solving this Church into a multitude of sects. The Establish- 
 mentarian aiming at the security of a Church established by law, 
 ends in the certain destruction of the Establishment he seeks to 
 preserve. Each of these, in fact, needs the assistance of the other 
 to maintain his own position in the English Church. The Catholic 
 cannot defend his position against the arguments of Romanism 
 until he has learned to limit his extreme theory of a visible Catho- 
 lic unity by that assertion of the rights and independence of the 
 National Church which he has denounced as Protestantism. The 
 Protest<ant Churchman can never hold his ground against the argu- 
 ments of the Dissenter without the recognition of that idea of a 
 visible CathoUc Church which he denounces as Popery. The 
 Establishmentarian can never defend the Establishment against 
 the arguments of the Rationalist until he recognizes the fact that the
 
 4S A CHARGE. 
 
 true comprehensiveness of our Church consists in her Catholicity, 
 and that inclusion, however wide you may make the limits of the en- 
 closure, implies something to be excluded as well as something to be 
 included. In truth, each of these parties, little as it might be dis- 
 posed to own it, has learned, is learning, much from the other two. 
 There is more of Evangelicalism in the High Churchman, more of 
 High Church principle in the Evangelical, more of Dogma in the 
 Broad Churchman than would flow from their own avowed prin- 
 ciples j but which comes for each from the influence of those to 
 whom he is most opposed. Candid and earnest men of all parties 
 are learning to recognize this more and more ; are coming to 
 understand that it is not given to any one School, or to any one 
 Age, any more than to any one man, to see truth on all sides ; 
 but that it is rather by the assertion, the necessarily one-sided 
 assertion, of different aspects of truth, that the whole body of the 
 truth can be preserv^ed. And so each comes in turn, not only to 
 endure, but to value the presence of the other in the Church, to 
 feel that there is an appointed and an important work for each 
 one of them to do, which can be done by that one only. And 
 thus while extreme men on either side are pushing their views to 
 extreme lengths, standing as far apart as possible, denouncing each 
 other so loudly and so bitterly, that it might be thought the 
 Church must speedily be torn asunder by their strife, the Church 
 herself — larger, wider, greater than any one of the parties within 
 her — may be gaining from their very strife a larger and a firmer 
 grasp of the truths of which she is the guardian — a clearer percep- 
 tion of the limits beyond which her children may not safely stray ; 
 the very errors and excesses of each party, their very shipwrecks 
 of the Faith, sad as they are to see, serving to buoy out on the 
 right hand and on the left the deep mid-channel of the Church's 
 course. It is to this growth of a sound and loyal Churchmanship 
 — taught in turn and learned in turn by each of the great parties 
 in our Church — that we must look under God for her safe passage 
 through the troubled waters on which she is now tossing. No 
 I.iws, however stringent, no prosecutions, however frequent, will 
 without this, preserve the purity of the Church. Disloyal men 
 will always contrive to come just within that hair-breadth of law- 
 breaking which every prosecution enables them the better to dis- 
 cern. Once let this spirit of disloyalty, therefore, be generally 
 prevalent and laws will be of little use ; and, on the other hand, 
 let but a spirit of loyalty prevail, and occasional breaches of the 
 law, however flagrant, will have no lasting ill efl"ects. I do not 
 mean to say that these are not to be repressed or punished. I do 
 not forget that laws which are never enforced must fall into gene- 
 ral contempt ; but I do say that it is not to the penal enforce- 
 ment of law, however necessary that may be, but to the loyalty 
 of Churchmen we must mainly look for the deliverance of our 
 Church from perils even greater than those through which she is
 
 J CHARGJ^. 49 
 
 now passing. " Dilige et fac quod voles " is the ti'ile spirit of all 
 Church legislation. Our Church cannot safely tolerate, she ought 
 not to tolerate for a single day those " wilful and contemptuous 
 transgressions " of her order and discipline which spring from hatred 
 of her essential principles and disloyal denial of her claims on the 
 obedience of her own children ; but she can and ought to bear much 
 and long with the errors of her loving sons, who, truly loyal to her 
 authority and honestly desirous of acting in the spirit of her 
 teaching, err, when they do err, but from excess of zeal for 
 her honour, and for her greater success in her great work in 
 winning souls for her Lord and Master. 
 
 Only in this spirit of loyalty to our own Church and of brotherly 
 charity towards each other, can we encounter the perils of our 
 day. Only thus shall we escape at once the bitter and estranging 
 suspicion which aggravates each minor difference into a heresy, 
 and the weak spirit of compromise which fears to recognize the 
 reality and the extent of our greater diff'erences. We cannot, if 
 we are true to our own convictions, sink, as it is phrased, our 
 differences. On the contrary, we must recognize them, utter 
 them, and very often act on them. Nevertheless, we may believe 
 that spite of these — nay, by means of these — the ever present 
 Spirit of God may be leading us all on to higher forms of Christian 
 life and deeper views of Christian truth. In this spirit, let us 
 endeavour to deal with each one of the questions that divide us 
 now, or may divide us hereafter ; seeking, praying, resolving that 
 our inevitable controversies shall be carried out, at once so 
 honestly and so lovingly, that neither by our lack of faithfulness 
 shall the Church suffer loss of truth, nor by our lack of charity, 
 shall she suffer loss of unity. 
 
 It is in this spirit, that I would fain hope we may yet be The Athana- 
 enabled to deal with what seems at this moment to be one of ^^^^ Creed, 
 the gravest questions which have arisen since the Reforma- 
 tion. I mean the present controversy as to our use of the 
 Athanasian Creed. Not unwillingly would I have avoided this 
 topic, on which I know that the views I have already ex- 
 pressed differ widely from those most dearly cherished by many 
 amongst you, whom I love and honour. And yet had I done 
 so, I do not believe that I should really have promoted our 
 unity as a Diocese, and that — not merely because my silence 
 would certainly not have prevented or lessened a controversy 
 which pervades our whole Church — but because it would neces- 
 sarily wear in your eyes the appearance of regarding this 
 question as one of so irritating a nature, that I must shun it 
 in my intercourse with you. I have no such fear. I do not, and 
 I pray that I never may, fear to speak in your presence with 
 fullest frankness and clearness, what, as before God, I believe to 
 be true. Besides, you have a right, my Reverend Brethren, to 
 
 E
 
 50 A CHARGE. 
 
 expect from your Bishop a distinct utterance on such a question 
 as this, and you would hold, I am sure, that one thing would 
 be far worse than any amount of error in what I might say 
 respecting it — namely the cautious cowardice that refused to 
 say anything at all. Let me, then, say what appear to me to be 
 the present aspect- and probable issue of this controversy respecting 
 the Athanasian Creed. 
 
 In the first place, then, I would observe, that wide and deep as 
 are the diiferences that divide us on the subject of this Creed ; 
 there are some points, at least, on which we are all rapidly coming 
 to an agreement. One of these is, that . the controversy has 
 reached a stage at which it cannot possibly stop. For good or for 
 evil, it has worked itself to this point, that the Creed, with its 
 accompanying rubrics, will not remain exactly as it is. Some con- 
 cession, it is now clear, will be made to the scruples, reasonable 
 or unreasonable, of those who feel their consciences burdened by 
 the use of the Creed, exactly " as it is and where it is." Its 
 extremest defenders are, for the most part, willing to go in 
 this direction the length, at least, of an explanatory Rubric, 
 or a synodical declaration as to its meaning; neither of Avhich, 
 certainly, would leave the Creed exactly " as it is," though they 
 would leave it " where it is " in our Prayer-Book. Another point, 
 on which we are all fast agreeing, is this — that no one proposed 
 solution of this question can be regarded as perfectly free from 
 serious difficulties or objections ; that so far from these solutions 
 being, any one of them, " small changes " of trifling import, they, 
 every one of them, really involve questions of principle, running far 
 and deep under the very foundations of our Church ; and that, 
 therefore, settle it how we may, there can be no settlement of the 
 question which will not demand on one side or another, some 
 sacrifice of strongly-cherished preference, if not of conviction. 
 One thing more I think we have gained by the discussion of the 
 last six months, and that is, that we have got rid of certain minor 
 questions which arose, as they are sure to arise at the beginning 
 of every great controversy, and which served only to obscure its 
 real' issue — questions, for instance, as to the date and authorship 
 of the Creed, or as. to certain minute improvements in the trans- 
 lation of it, which all are now agreed in regarding as almost, if 
 not altogether, immaterial. ; And amongst these, let us hope, may 
 ere long be classed the still more irrelevant questions as to 
 the motives and aims of the disputants on either side, of which 
 this controversy has already had, at least, its full share. Railing 
 accusations on the one hand, of "dishonesty," "profligacy," 
 "immorality," "shameless baseness," " treachery to ordination and 
 consecration vows," " hatred of all definite religion," " covert 
 sympathy with scepticism," may, let us hope, be allowed to pair 
 off with accusations on the other side of "clerical bigotry," 
 "priestly arrogance and intolerance," and "delight in the idea
 
 A CHARGE. 51 
 
 of the perdition of those who differ from us." Hysterical ex- 
 clamations of this kind serve the cause of truth as little as they 
 do that of charity, and we may agree to dismiss them from our 
 minds with only the expression of a hope that the authors of 
 these latest of damnatory clauses, may yet be enabled to read 
 them with such explanatory rubrics as their calmer and better 
 reason may suggest. 
 
 Setting aside, then, all such minor and really irrelevant con- 
 siderations as these ; two- questions, and only two, as it seems to 
 me, stand out clear and distinct from all the rest as those on which 
 the decision of this controversy must ultimately turn : First, 
 has the Church of England the right to touch the Athanasian 
 Creed at all ? Secondly, assuming that she has this right, is there 
 any sufficient reason why she should exercise it ? It is clear that 
 if either of these questions be decided in the negative, there is 
 practically an end of the whole controversy. And it is equally 
 clear, that until they have both been decided in the affirmative, it 
 is premature, and, what is more, it is extremely confusing to dis- 
 cuss any particular mode of dealing with the Creed. 
 
 The first of these questions is, obviously, one of those conflicts 
 of principle of which I have just been speaking. It is really a 
 question between the rights and authority of the Church National 
 and the Church Catholic. Those who protest against any dealing 
 whatever, or, as they would say, any tampering with the Athanasian 
 Creed by our Church, do so on the express ground that all such 
 dealings are for her ultra vires. They remind us that the Creed 
 is one of the creeds of the Church Catholic ; a part therefore of 
 the Dcpositum Fidei " divinely given to our Church," of which 
 she is only the guardian, and of which she may not therefore alter 
 so much as a letter without proving faithless to her trust, and 
 without " severing herself from the unity of Catholic Christendom." 
 
 To this assertion it might be replied, that whatever degree of 
 truth it might have as regards the Nicene Creed, it is not true 
 of the Athanasian, which has neither the authority of any 
 general Council, nor, in the form in which we receive it, the 
 acceptance of the Church Universal.'"* Granting, however, that 
 the Athanasian Creed stood exactly on the same footing as the 
 " Niceno-Constantinopolitan," would the Anglican Church have 
 therefore no right to alter so much as a letter of it.? Those 
 who say so must either assert the infallibility of general Councils, 
 which our Church expressly denies, or they must prove, as they 
 certainly cannot prove, that even the Nicene Creed, as we receive 
 it, possesses that literal totality of Catholic consent to which alone 
 even the claim for infahibility attaches. Or if granting that the 
 Creed is not of infallible authorship, they assert only that it is true, 
 
 * See Note (E). 
 
 £ 2
 
 52 A CHARGE. 
 
 i.e. expresses the true Catholic faith, and that to aker it, therefore, 
 in the very least degree, implies a severance from Catholic unity ; 
 they have to show that unity of faith is necessarily the same thing 
 with literal identity of creed ; so completely and absolutely the 
 same thing that the least variation of verbal expression necessarily 
 implies loss of unity. If this be so, we must be prepared to admit 
 that Western Christendom is no longer at one with the ancient 
 Catholic Church, inasmuch as without Catholic consent it has 
 altered the Nicene Creed by the addition of the Filioque clause ; 
 and we must further admit that previous to the first general Council 
 the Church had no true unity of Faith, inasmuch as all the different 
 local Churches — though agreeing in the substance of the Faith — 
 did not express that faith in literally identical Creeds. But if we 
 are not prepared to say this, then we must, I think, admit that less 
 than Catholic consent may warrant the alteration even of the 
 Creed of a general Council ; and that a Church local, by such 
 alteration, does not necessarily sever herself from Catholic unity — 
 provided always, that the alteration does not amount to the cor- 
 ruption or denial of any article of the ■ faith, in the oneness of 
 which, and not in the exact and literal identity of the terminology 
 in which it'is expressed, true Catholic unity consists. 
 
 Be this, however, as it may, it is at least clear that our Church 
 asserts for herself the right to alter the Creeds, when she declares, 
 as her only reason for receiving them, that " they may be proved 
 by most certain warrant of Holy Scripture." In these words her 
 assent, and, therefore, the continuance of it, is conditioned on one 
 thing, and one thing only — her conviction of the agreement of 
 these Creeds with Scripture. Her right to assent on the ground 
 of Scriptural proof, clearly implies her right to dissent on the 
 ground of Scriptural disproof Unless, indeed, we maintain that, 
 having once assented to the Creeds on the ground of their accord- 
 ance with Holy Writ, she may never reconsider this assent ; an 
 assertion which could only be justified on the ground that the 
 Church of England not only claims to be, but is, infallible — which 
 certainly will not be alleged by those who deny her right to deal 
 with the Creeds. Of course, it is another and a very different 
 question whether she should ever attempt to exercise the right she 
 thus claims. Like all other rights, this can only be exercised 
 under penalties for the misuse of it; under most tremendous 
 penalties in the case of the Creeds. Nevertheless, she does most 
 distinctly claim this right. She does, by implication, most distinctly 
 assert, that in her capacity of guardian for her children of the Faith 
 — which is not necessarily the same thing with being guardian of 
 the Creeds — she has the right, though at her own peril, to modify 
 the Creeds, or any part of them, as God's word shall seem to her 
 to require. 
 
 Assuming, however, that the Church of England possesses the 
 right to deal with the Athanasian Creed, there still remains, as I
 
 A CHARGE. 
 
 S^ 
 
 have just said, that other and far dififerent question, whether there 
 be any sufficient reason why she should do so. I say sufficient 
 reason, because I do most deeply feel, with the defenders of this 
 Creed, that it is not a light thing for our Church to meddle with a 
 confession of faith so ancient, so justly dear to thousands of her 
 most faithful and devoted members ; and, that the onus, therefore, 
 lies on those who advocate any change, to show not only that there 
 is some reason — nay, even that there are many and weighty reasons 
 for the change — but that these are more and weightier than those that 
 may be urged against it. This is really the question we have to 
 decide, and a most difficult and anxious one it is — a question so 
 difficult and anxious, that I for one could earnestly have wished 
 that it had not been raised in our day. But now that it has been 
 raised, now that we must meet it with such measure of wisdom and 
 courage as God may vouchsafe us, I feel just as strongly that we 
 can only deal with it safely in a spirit of strictest faithfulness, each 
 one of us, to our own convictions, leaving the issue to Him who 
 has brought His Church through graver perils and sorer difficulties 
 than this. 
 
 Before stating, however, the reasons which appear to me to call 
 for some change in the use or the wording of this Creed, let me 
 first state, that there are reasons given for change with which I have 
 no sympathy whatever. I can see no reasonableness in the objec- 
 tions that are urged against the Creed, on the ground either of the 
 mysteriousness of its subject matter, or the subtlety of its defini- 
 tions, or the alleged obsoleteness of the heresies it denounces. As 
 to mystery, it is of the essence of the Faith. The subject of the 
 Faith is God, and of Him we cannot speak at all without uttering 
 mysteries. That God is One is a proposition as truly mysterious 
 as the proposition that He is Three in One. And if ever the 
 Deist were to attempt to compose a Creed which should exclude, 
 what for him are the heresies of Pantheism and Atheism, he could 
 only do so by definitions far more subtle than those by which we fence 
 the doctrine of the Trinity. The subtlety of these definitions is 
 the necessary result of the subtlety of the heresies they oppose. 
 These definitions are subtle and intricate, much in the same way 
 that the thorns of a fence are thick-set and sharp ; it is only 
 those who strive to break into, or out of, the fence who feel their 
 sharpness. As to obsolete heresies, the heresies defined in the 
 Creed are not obsolete, not even in England, to say nothing of 
 those other countries in which the Anglican Church recites it. On 
 the contrary, I fear that we might find amongst those who believe 
 themselves perfectly orthodox, no small number of Tritheists, Sabel- 
 lians, and Apollinarians. Most precious, therefore, do I believe 
 each one of the great dogmatic definitions of this Creed to be ; and 
 most deeply should I regret the loss to our Church of so great a 
 safeguard of the Catholic Faith, which would result from her
 
 54 A CHARGE. 
 
 ceasing to repeat these in her public Services. Nor, again, can 
 I agree with the objection that this Creed is uncharitable be- 
 cause it warns us of the peril of unbelief On the contrary, I hold 
 most firmly that man's responsibility for his belief is as clearly 
 taught in Scripture as his responsibility for his conduct, and that 
 to warn him of this responsibility is to warn him not only truly but. 
 charitably. I am as strongly opposed as the most strenuous de- 
 fenders of this Creed can be, to the heresy of indifferentism which ' 
 would remove from our Faith that element of holy and loving se- 
 verity, which no false charity should ever induce us to surrender 
 or to weaken. 
 
 Nor lastly do I think that a change should be made in the use 
 of the Creed, simply because its use is distasteful to very many 
 members of our Church. It is not the first duty of the Church to 
 jilease her children. It is her first duty to teach them, and to teach 
 them all of Divine truth she knows, and that whether they will 
 hear or whether they will forbear. And I cannot, therefore, too 
 strongly deprecate the attempts that are being made to influence 
 the decision of this question by threats, on one side or the other, 
 of what certain meml3ers of our Church will do, if it be not decided 
 exactly in the way they desire. Threats, for instance, on the one 
 hand, of " the Laity taking the matter into their own hands," if 
 their demands are not promptly complied with ; and on the other 
 hand, of secession, or of "joining the Liberation Society," if they 
 are. Such threats in the columns of newspapers seem to savour 
 more of political agitation than of christian counsel and delibera- 
 tion. Certainly, had the Church feared like threats in times past, 
 we never should have had the Creeds. 
 
 Let us hope, too, that our Church may not be influenced in her 
 deliberations on this question by a consideration which has been 
 much urged of late, namely, that if we once begin to touch this 
 Creed there is no saying where Ave may stop. If we alter the 
 Athanasian Creed, it is said, why not the Nicene ? Why not the 
 Apostles' Creed ? If we touch the damnatory clauses, shall we 
 ultimately retain even those which assert the Trinity and the 
 Incarnation ? Have those ^vho thus speak utterly forgotten our 
 Lord's promise to be with His Church always, even to the end of 
 the world ? Do they realize the fact that He is with us now in 
 this nineteeth century, as truly and as closely present as He was 
 with His Church in the fourth, or in the sixth, or in any other cen- 
 tury ? And if He be so present, why should we fear to trust Him 
 with the future of His own Church? Why should we fear that if 
 in faithfulness to the light He gives us we seek more truly to define, 
 or better to guard, the Faith He has entrusted to us, we shall be 
 punished for our faithfulness by being suffered to wander into all 
 error instead of being guided, as He has promised we sliaUbe, into 
 all truth ? Let us take care that in our dread of the heresies 
 denounced in this Creed, we do not fall into one of the most
 
 A CHARGE, 
 
 55 
 
 perilous of all heresies — the practical denial of the living, guiding, 
 guarding presence of our Lord with His Church now as well as in 
 past times, hereafter as well as now. 
 
 One consideration, and one only, will I trust be allowed by our 
 Church ultimately to decide this question, and it is this : Is every 
 sentence, is every phrase, in this creed, not only true ; but truth 
 expressed in its truest and best form? If so " Cadit qncestio^' there 
 is no longer room for considerations of expediency or of charity. 
 Truth, however stern or severe it may seem to be, is the highest 
 charity, and its fullest proclamation the truest expediency. If, 
 however, the Church, after due and calm deliberation, should be 
 led to the conclusion that any sentence in this Creed is either not 
 true, or is truth so imperfectly or unguardedly expressed as to lead 
 to error, then I pray that she may have the courage and the 
 faithfulness to her trust, to alter or remove that sentence, spite of 
 all threats or warnings of consequences on the one side or the 
 other. 
 
 As regards the truth of this Creed, our Church clearly stands 
 pledged to it by her eighth Article. And so do all those who 
 have subscribed that Article, so long as it remains unaltered 
 and so long as they retain the offices which they have obtained 
 on condition of that subscription — a fact which, if any of us had 
 been tempted to forget, we have been abundantly reminded of 
 lately. The question, however, is not whether the doctrines set 
 forth in this Creed are true, and may be proved so "by most 
 certain warrant of Holy Scripture;" but w^hether they in every 
 instance set forth truth in its clearest and truest form ; whether, 
 for instance, from original ambiguity of expression, from the 
 context in which they stand, from the insensible change in 
 the meaning of words which comes with lapse of time and is 
 inherent in human speech, some of the expressions in this Creed 
 do not appear to mean that, which cannot " be proved by Holy 
 Writ," to be "necessary to salvation." To say that this is so, 
 is perfectly consistent with affirming the substantial truth of the 
 doctrines contained in the Creed. Is there one of us teachers 
 and preachers who has not had occasion to say of some statement, 
 — his own or another's — There is a sense in which this is un- 
 doubtedly true and is capable of being proved from the Bible, 
 and yet it seems to me harshly and crudely expressed ; it is almost 
 certain, unless guarded and qualified somewhat, to be misunder- 
 stood and to do mischief; it might be better expressed thus or 
 thus, or might even be better omitted from its present context, 
 which tends to obscure and pervert its meaning? Surely, if we 
 may say this of our own or one another's teaching without thereby 
 affirming the falsehood of what we thus censure, the Church may 
 lawfully say, and we may lawfully ask her to say this, if need 
 be, of her teachings, while yet we admit and affirm those teachings 
 to be in their substance true.
 
 56 A CHARGE. 
 
 Is it, then, the fact that there are certain expressions in the 
 Athanasian Creed, which make it appear to affirm "as neces- 
 sary to Salvation " more than Scripture warrants ? Certainly no 
 one will deny that there are a very large nmiiber of persons 
 who are firmly persuaded that there are such. What these persons 
 say is this. We are required when we recite the Athanasian 
 Creed to say; first, that except a man "do keep the Catholic 
 Faith whole and undefiled" — "whole," that is, without the loss 
 of the minutest part ; " undefiled,'' that is, without the intrusion 
 of any, even the slightest error, — he shall " without doubt perish 
 everlastingly."'"' Next, we are required to affirm, that the Catholic 
 faith consists in a series of propositions which are set forth at 
 great length and with great minuteness of detail, ending with 
 this affirmation, which, coming at the end of them all, seems 
 to include each and every one of these propositions : " This is 
 the Catholic Faith ; which except a man believe faithfully, he 
 cannot be saved." 
 
 It seems to us, therefore, that inasmuch as any one who denies 
 or imperfectly apprehends any one of these propositions, has not 
 kept the Faith whole or undefiled, every such person " cannot be 
 saved." That is to say, we are required to affirm, not only of 
 the Nestcrian, Eutychian, ApoUinarian, but of those who deny, or 
 who do not rightly receive the doctrine of the Double Procession, 
 of Christ's descent into hell, of the resurrection of the bodies of 
 the dead, or of everlasting punishment, — nay, of those who do not 
 believe faithfully the damnatory clauses which are a part of this 
 Creed, and, therefore, of the Catholic Faith — that is to say, all 
 those who do not believe that certain other persons cannot be 
 saved — that such cannot themselves be saved; and this, "without 
 doubt," without there being any room even for that doubtful hope 
 which might leave such persons to the unco venanted mercies of God. 
 
 Now, I do not affirm— I am as far as possible from affirming — 
 that those who say this are right in all this their interpretation of 
 the Creed ; I am only stating the simple and undeniable fact that 
 hundreds and thousands of persons do persistently affirm this to 
 be, for them, the most obvious and most natural meaning of the 
 words of the Creed. And what is more, that they affirm this, 
 after they have heard all the explanations and qualifications which 
 are offered by those who maintain that this is neither its true 
 nor its most obvious meaning. When you have told them that 
 the Church in the Creed " pronounces, and means to pronounce no 
 judgment on individuals ; " that the damnatory clauses are only 
 " general warnmgs of the peril of unbelief," and mean no more 
 than such general warnings mean in Ho'y Scripture, and that if we 
 
 * Surely this sentence is a sentence of condemnation on individuals, though 
 it is not a final sentence on any jiarticular individual. " ()///>" is a person, and 
 not a doctrine ; and yet we are told that *' the Church in this Creed only con- 
 demns doctrines, not individuals,"
 
 A CHARGE. 57 
 
 accept these we cannot refuse to accept those; that the words 
 " without doubt he shall perish ever-lastingly," mean only, without 
 doubt he belongs to a class of persons who are in danger of 
 perishing everlastingly ; that the words, " this is the Catholic 
 Faith," apply only to certain propositions in the Creed, which are 
 of the essence of the Faith, and not to certain others which are 
 merely expositions of it and which properly should be enclosed 
 in a parenthesis ; when all this has been said, their answer is, all 
 that you say may be true; it maybe that the Creed should be 
 read with all these qualifications and explanations that you supply, 
 though some of them appear to us subtle and far-fetched, and 
 some of them even questionable ; it may be, that with the help 
 of these, the Creed may yield the sense you give it. All we 
 say is, that still this does not seem to us its most obvious and 
 literal sense; it is not that sense which nine out of ten who 
 recite it, attach to it. And if this be its true sense, it is much 
 to be desired that it were expressed more clearly; that those 
 meanings, for instance, which you give to certain expressions 
 in it, were substituted for them, and that we were not called on 
 as we are now, to make a severe mental effort of theological 
 reasoning and defining, before we can take the words in the sense 
 in which you tell us they ought to be taken. Now, if it be the 
 fact that hundreds and thousands of most attached members of our 
 Church, are saying this, what is the sense of telling them that they 
 are, one and all of them — including some of the most eminent, 
 most learned and most pious of our clergy and laity — men as 
 capable, certainly, of understanding the meaning of theological 
 terms as their accusers — that they are one and all of them ignorant 
 persons, perversely incapable of understanding the meaning of the 
 plainest propositions ? Let us grant that they are so, and what does 
 that prove ? Simply this ; that there are expressions in this Creed 
 so worded, as to be inevitably misunderstood by large numbers of 
 those who are required to recite them ; that, spite of every ex- 
 planation that can be offered, these words appear to these persons 
 to have, as their first and most literal meaning, precisely that sense, 
 which a large number of other persons affirm that they have not 
 and cannot possibly have. Can there be put into words a stronger 
 argument for considering, at least, whether these expressions — con- 
 fessedly so generally misunderstood — are not ambiguously expressed, 
 and might not be made to convey more clearly that meaning 
 which all agree in saying that they ought to convey ? Surely, the 
 more ignorant, and the more perverse they are, who, as it is 
 alleged, thus misunderstand the Creed, the more reason there is 
 in common charity, for not putting needless difticulties in the way 
 of their ignorance or giving needless strength to their perversity. 
 It is the blind, in whose path we are forbidden to cast stumbling 
 blocks ; it is the lame, whom we are forbidden to turn out of the 
 way.
 
 58 A CHARGE. 
 
 This reason, hov/ever, for re-considering those expressions in the 
 Athanasian Creed, which are thus, it is alleged, so generally mis- 
 understood, becomes much stronger when- we turn from the ob- 
 jections of those who, we are told, utterly misunderstand them, to 
 the explanations of those who claim, not only truly to understand 
 them, but to understand them in their only true and literal sense. 
 Certainly, we should expect from such persons an explanation of 
 these misinterpreted passages which should be, not only clear and 
 definite, but unanimous. Certainly, we should not expect to hear 
 from them a great variety of explanations, differing and even 
 contradictory. And yet this is exactly what we do hear. We 
 find that the defenders of the integrity of the Creed, when 
 they come to tell us what it really does mean, differ, not only 
 as to the scope and intent of the damnatory clauses, but as 
 to the meaning of nearly every word they contain. We are told, 
 for instance, that ^' there is no Anathema sit in any of the Creeds ;" 
 and we are told, "that a Creed necessarily implies an anathema — ■ 
 tacit, if not express." We are told " that the damnatory clauses 
 apply only to the rejection of certain fundamental doctrines in the 
 Creed, and that the others, being introduced by way of argument 
 and illustration, are not obligatory : " and we are told, that as 
 Bishop Pearson says, "the 'I believe' of a creed is diffused through 
 every article and proposition of it ; " and again, " that the ad- 
 monitory clauses are a plain confession that whatever a- Creed of 
 the Church contains is certainly and infallibly true, to be accepted 
 as the condition of a man's everlasting salvation.'' We are told 
 that ante omnia means — before all things " in the order of time," 
 and that it means — before all things in the order of necessity. 
 We are told that quiamqiLe vult salvns esse, means — " Who would 
 be in the safest way," not that there may not be " other less safe 
 ways ;" and we are told that it means — " he who would be saved 
 from eternal perdition;" and again, that it means — "he who 
 values soundness of mind;" nay we are told, that in a^ternum 
 perihit may mean, not that the unbeliever " shall perish everlast- 
 ingly;" but that "the Catholic faith would, in that case, no doubt 
 be lost to us for ever !" W^e are told that the admonitory clauses 
 do not apply to cases of " involuntary ignorance or invincible 
 prejudice ;" and we are told that invincible prejudice may mean 
 " an aggravated form of wickedness." 
 
 These are some of the differing and contradictory explanations 
 of the damnatory clauses which I have gathered from a few only of 
 the many pamphlets, sermons, and letters to which this contro- 
 versy has given rise. How many more of these there may be 
 I cannot say. I have cited enough to show that the meaning of 
 these clauses is apparently so ambiguous that hardly any two of 
 their most strenuous defenders can agree amongst themselves as 
 to what they do mean. If, therefore, each one of these differing 
 interpreters subscribes to them, as we are indignantly assured that
 
 A CHARGE. 
 
 59 
 
 they do, in their strict and hteral sense, it is clear that either the 
 strict and literal meaning of these words is not perfectly obvious, or 
 that they are so worded as to bear more than one obvious and 
 strictly literal meaning. Surely, this again, is a strong, a very 
 strong reason for considering whether language so variously inter- 
 preted may not be needlessly ambiguous, and may not be 
 capable of clearer expression. 
 
 And if this clearer expression be possible, surely it is of all 
 things most desirable ; and that not merely because it is the duty 
 of the Church to set forth the faith in the clearest and least 
 ambiguous form possible, but because this ambiguity in the case 
 of clauses so tremendous as these damnatory clauses, necessarily 
 gives rise to two great evils — sophistical and casuistical explana- 
 tions of these clauses on the one hand, and a violent reaction 
 against all dogma, on the other. When penalties so awful are 
 attached to definitions so many and minute, and in words so 
 capable either of exaggeration on the one hand, or of ex- 
 planations which explain them away on the other, men are 
 sorely tempted to take one or other of these courses, accord- 
 ing to their dispositions. They, have taken them, they are taking 
 them now, and it is hard to say which of them is the most 
 fatal to all true religion, endangering as they do, the one all 
 dogma, and the other all morality. I do not say, that it may not 
 be our duty to encounter this peril. We do and must encounter 
 it, as regards some of the words of God, which being His words 
 and not ours, we may not dare to alter, and which we believe He 
 has left thus doubtful for reasons known only to Himself. But 
 these words of the Athanasian Creed are not God's words, they 
 are Man's words ; and, therefore, before we accept, as regards them, 
 this perilous alternative, we are clearly bound to see whether 
 they may not be so expressed as to save us from it, or whether, 
 if they cannot be so expressed, they are not better omitted. 
 
 We are told, however, that these words are not man's words, 
 that they are no more and no other than our Lord's own words ; 
 that the judgment they pronounce is not the Church's, but His ; 
 that she may not, therefore, and dare not, alter them. The Church, 
 we are told, in declaring to her children the necessity of hold- 
 ing the faith, ventures not to say other than "just what her 
 Lord said" — "no less and no more." 
 
 Is this so? Are these damnatory clauses just what our Lord 
 said — no less and no more ? 
 
 Literally, of course, it is not so. No such words as the damna- 
 tory clauses were ever spoken by our Lord. To say that they are 
 just what He said — no less and no more — is, therefore, one of 
 those rhetorical amplifications too largely used in this controversy. 
 Ali that it really means is, that the words are so exact and true an 
 equivalent of our Lord's words, that they may be said to be His. 
 This, however, to begin with, is a very bold thing to say of any
 
 6o A CHARGE. 
 
 human words whatever. The moment that we substitute for the 
 very words of Christ, words that we think equivalent to His, in 
 that moment we introduce the possibihty of human error and 
 infirmity. It is, to say the least, possible, it is not too much to say 
 even probable, that our words may not mean exactly what His 
 meant. It is, therefore, presumptuous to say that they must 
 necessarily be exactly the same, and not only presumptuous, but 
 uncharitai3le in the last degree, to accuse all those who doubt 
 whether they are the same — of a secret desire to deny His 
 words.* Certainly, it appears to me nothing less than astounding 
 that men should assert that, when our Lord said, " He that be- 
 lieveth not shall be damned," t He necessarily meant. He that 
 keepeth not whole and undefiled every one of the statements 
 in the Athanasian Creed — He, for* instance, that believeth not 
 that " as the soul and flesh is one man, so God and Man is 
 one Christ," that is to say — he that denies, not the Incarnation, 
 but the correctness of a particular illustration of the Incar- 
 nation, — "shall be damned"; and further, that our Lord's words 
 so necessarily and obviously mean "just this," that to doubt 
 this is to doubt His words. 
 
 But are the words of the damnatory clauses manifestly and ob- 
 viously the exact equivalent of our Lord's words ? Is " not to keep 
 the Catholic Faith whole and undefiled" the exact equivalent, or 
 fair translation, of 6 dTrto-revo-a? ? Is " without doubt he shall perish 
 everlastingly" the exact equivalent, or a fair rendering, of KaraKpi-. 
 OrjO-crai ? 
 
 To me they seem to be not merely not the equivalent of these 
 words, but not even a true inference from them. When our 
 Lord says — "He that believeth not, shall be condemned," He 
 does not say expressly what is that, the non-belief of which entails 
 condemnation. This is to be inferred from the context. When, 
 therefore, we claim His authority for the damnatory clauses, we 
 say, in effect, this : We conclude from the context in which these 
 words stand, that they mean — he that believeth not every article in 
 the Athanasian Creed, shall perish everlastingly. Observe, we take, 
 here, as it were, one step away from our Lord's own words, we 
 have now got into the region of human, and, therefore, fallible 
 inference. But is this a necessary inference from His words ? 
 Very far from it, as it seems to me. Our Lord — sending out His 
 Apostles to preach the Gospel to the heathen, as the means and 
 condition of salvation, says — " He that believeth" — wJiatl This 
 Gospel — " and is baptised, shall be saved ; he that believeth 
 not" — what ? The same Gospel — " shall be condemned." 
 
 * See Note (F). 
 
 t I have assumed in this argument tliat tlicsc words were spoken by our 
 Lord. If they were not, I fully grant that there are other passages in Scripture 
 quite as strongly worded as this.
 
 A CHARGE. 6t 
 
 The Gospel was the good news that Jesus Christ came into the 
 world to save sinners, and those who accept this Gospel, that is, 
 who beheve in Him as their Saviour, and are Baptised, He tells us 
 " shall be saved." Baptism implies belief in the Name into which 
 men are baptised. Clearly, then, according to our Lord's own 
 statement, belief in the Trinity, and acceptance of Christ as the 
 Saviour of the sinner, are the conditions of Salvation under 
 the new Covenant. And he that refuses these so utterly that 
 he will not accept the Gospel and therefore will not be baptised, he, 
 that is, who so utterly rejects Christianity that he will not become 
 a Christian, he must be condemned. That is to say, our Lord's 
 words, taken in their context, seem to apply, primarily, not to 
 those within, but to those who, being without, refuse to come 
 within the Church ; and secondarily, by inference, to those who, 
 having come within the Church, so far apostatize from the faith as 
 that they could not — believing no more than they do — have been 
 admitted to Baptism. 
 
 Now, if this be the meaning of our Lord's words, then so far 
 from the damnatory clauses being either just what He said, or a 
 necessary inference from what He said, they would be as nearly 
 as possible the converse of what He said — His words applying 
 primarily to those without; the damnatory clauses primarily to 
 those within, the Church— His words affixing a penalty to re- 
 jection of all the Faith ; the damnatory clauses affixing it to the loss 
 of any, even the least part of it. In a word, the difference between 
 the clauses and His words seems to me to be, that they affix to 
 misbelief, even in the least degree, the penalty which He affixes 
 to imbeliefm the greatest degree. 
 
 Now, I am far from asserting that the interpretation I have just 
 given for our Lord's words is certainly the true one. I only say 
 that it is a perfectly possible interpretation of them, and that until 
 not only this but every interpretation of our Lord's words, other 
 than that given in the damnatory clauses, is shown to be un- 
 tenable, we have no right to say that the damnatory clauses are 
 " just what He said," no less and no more. 
 
 But we shall be told that misbeUef concerning the doctrines of 
 the Trinity and the Incarnation is really unbelief; for this reason, 
 that he who does not rightly believe all the truth concerning 
 Christ's nature, is not really believing in Christ — that is, in the 
 true and real Christ — but in a false Christ of his own devising, 
 and, therefore, may truly be said " to believe not." But — not 
 to insist on the point that there are articles in the Athanasian 
 Creed which have no necessary connection with the doctrine 
 either of the Trinity or the Incarnation, and yet which come 
 within the scope of the damnatory clauses — I observe that we 
 have here a new and distinct proposition, which does not so much 
 as pretend to be an inference from our Lord's words. It is this : 
 He who does not in all respects correctly apprehend the nature
 
 62 A CHARGE. 
 
 of the Being in whom he beheves does not truly beheve in Him. 
 He that doth not keep whole and undefiled the Catholic faith, 
 does not correctly apprehend the nature of Christ. Therefore, 
 he that does not keep whole and undefiled the Catholic Faith, 
 does not truly believe in Christ. 
 
 Now, I will not ask whether this is just what our Lord said, 
 or whether it is an inference, necessary or otherwise, from what 
 He said, for it is clearly neither of these. But I ask, is this 
 proposition so certainly and evidently true that we may not 
 only found on it the assertion of the peril of perdition to large 
 classes of men, but the accusation of covert unbelief against who- 
 soever questions this proposition ? Is it true at all ? To me it 
 seems to bear a sad resemblance to such propositions as these. 
 He who denies God's sovereignty and pre-destinating decrees, 
 does not rightly apprehend God's nature ; therefore the Arminian 
 who denies this does not truly believe in the true God, and, there- 
 fore, cannot be saved ! Or this — The Calvinist who believes that 
 God could create men for eternal perdition, does not believe in 
 the true God, and, therefore, cannot be saved ! Or — The true wor- 
 ship of God is essential to salvation : Roman Catholics who 
 worship saints and angels do not truly worship God ; therefore, no 
 Roman Catholic can be saved ! Have none of you, my Reverend 
 Brethren, heard or met with arguments such as these, and in what 
 respect do they differ from that which I have stated above ? What 
 are they, one and all, but so many assertions that he who does not be- 
 lieve all necessary deductions from any doctrine does not believe the 
 doctrine itself, or, in other words, that misbelief is always unbelief, 
 and that the warnings attaching to the one attach necessarily to the 
 other. Misbehef is not unbehef It differs from it essentially in 
 this, that it admits of degrees ; the other does not. All z/;/belief 
 is sin, and is equally sin, whatever be the subject-matter of it ; it is 
 not a mistake, it is a crime; it is that hardening of the heart and 
 contempt of God's word, which not only ends in, but is, eternal 
 death. Misbelief is not necessarily sin at all; it is a mistake 
 and not a crime ; it may, of course, lead on to unbelief, and 
 here is its greatest peril; it always entails spiritual loss of 
 some kind, and here is its necessary penalty ; but it is not unbelief, 
 nor does the penalty for unbelief attach to it. 
 
 But we shall be told — how often are we told — that this is all that 
 the damnatory clauses really do mean; that they do not condemn 
 misbelief as such, but only where it is compli(iated with unbelief; 
 that is to say, only where it is "wilful rejection of the CatholicFaith 
 against light and knowledge." On this I have to observe, in the 
 first place, that I am utterly unable to reconcile it with the plea 
 made for the first clause in the Creed — Quicimque viilt salvus 
 esse, — which we are told is " a declaration by the Church of the 
 condition on which Almighty God grants salvation," namely, " cor- 
 rect faith in all who can have it ;" and that the Church in these
 
 A CHANGE. 6z 
 
 words declares " that the only way of salvation she knows is the 
 Catholic Faith." If so, then, surely, he who is out of that way is 
 equally out of it, whether he has strayed from it or has deliber- 
 ately left it. Surely, if a certain medicine be absolutely essen- 
 tial to the recovery of a patient, he must, humanly speaking, 
 as certainly die for want of taking it, whether he wilfully- refuse it 
 or whether he mistake som€ other for it. 
 
 If, however, this be the real meaning of these clauses, then 
 it is most unfortunate that they should so utterly fail to express 
 it. There is no word in any one of them which so much as im- 
 plies that wilful unbelief, and that only, is the peril against which 
 they warn us. " Wilful rejection of the Catholic Faith " is neither 
 the obvious nor the hteral, nor even the necessarily implied mean- 
 ing of "not keeping it whole and undefiled." Most certainly it is 
 not one of those " qualifications with which all general propositions 
 must be understood," and which " each person may and must be 
 trusted to make for himself" It is a distinct and separate theo- 
 logical proposition, arbitrarily added to these words in order to 
 qualify them, and neither necessarily implied in them nor to be 
 inferred from them. Is it, then, too much to ask, that if the 
 clauses are intended to mean this they should be so altered as to 
 say this and this only, clearly and distinctly? Can there be a 
 stronger condemnation of a minatory clause, than that it fails so 
 much as to allude to that one peril against which it is specially 
 intended to warn us ? 
 
 Furthermore, if these clauses are directed only against wilful 
 unbehef then they are doubly misleading; because not only do they 
 omit all mention of that unbelief against which they ought to warn 
 us, but, standing as they do in closest connection with a long series 
 of definitions of misbelief, they naturally and inevitably cause the 
 impression that it is the things which are mentioned, and not that 
 which is not mentioned, against which we are to be on our guard — • 
 that is to say, they divert the mind from the greater peril of -an 
 unbelieving heart to the far lesser peril of a misbelieving under- 
 standing. While, on the other hand, the qualification that only 
 wilful ?/;^belief is condemned by the clauses, tends to obscure the 
 real though lesser peril of ///zVbelief. In a word, these clauses, in 
 their present wording and context, mean either too much or too 
 little. Too much, if we take them as, what they seem to be, 
 warnings against misbelief only ; too little, if we take them, as 
 what we are told they really are, warnings only against wilful 
 unbelief. 
 
 Lastly ; assuming that these clauses are only the very words of 
 our Lord, it is not correct to say, that i7i the context in luhich 
 they stand they are only general warnings against unbelief. They 
 are general warnings with a particular application added — namely, 
 a list of certain classes or categories of errors, every one of which is
 
 64 A CHARGE. 
 
 asserted to come within the scope of these clauses. They are general 
 clauses, therefore, only in the sense in which the major proposition 
 of a syllogism is general, in order that from it may be deduced by 
 the help of the minor, a particular conclusion. They are general in 
 the sense in which the words of a Statute are general until limited 
 and applied by the interpretation clauses. When we say, " he 
 that hath not the Son, hath not life," we assert a general proposi- 
 tion. But when we add to this, as we have seen we must add to it, 
 this minor proposition, The Nestorian and the Eutychian, and he 
 that denies the Double Procession, or the descent into Hell, or the 
 resurrection of our bodies, " hath not the Son," we necessarily arrive 
 at the particular conclusion, such persons "have not life." It is, 
 therefore, simply idle to talk only of the general warnings of 
 Scripture, when we place these warnings in a context, in which 
 they necessarily cease to be general, and become special and 
 particular. And let me add on this point, that what really 
 needs proof, in the above syllogism, is not its major premise, 
 on which so much superfluous demonstration has been wasted, 
 but the minor; namely, that the Nestorian, or the Eutychian, 
 or the Apollinarian, or he who denies the descent into hell, or 
 the resurrection of our bodies, "hath not the Son." For this 
 I should like to see some more cogent proof than has yet been 
 brought. Certainly, it is not to be found in the way in which 
 it is generally attempted; namely, by first quoting from Scrip- 
 ture general warnings of the peril of unbelief, and then by 
 proving that each of these heresies is unscriptural, or that the 
 contradictory truth is scriptural. For what is to be proved 
 is not that these heresies are unscriptural, but that they are 
 errors of that kind and degree to which Scripture attaches the 
 warning of perdiuon ; or, in other words, what we have to show 
 is not that every statement in the Creed is Scriptural, but that 
 every one of them is necessary to salvation."* Nothing, therefore, 
 can be more inaccurate or unfair, than to accuse those who doubt 
 whether every one of the errors condemned in the Creed is 
 necessarily fatal to eternal life, or whether every one of the 
 doctrines stated in it is essential to eternal life, with denying 
 that correct faith is essential to salvation. He who questions, for 
 instance, whether behef in our Lord's descent into hell, or belief 
 that His resurrection took place on the third day after His 
 death and not on the second, is necessary to eternal life, no more 
 denies that these statements are correct, or that correct faith is 
 essential to eternal life, than he who questions whether meat 
 is a necessary of life denies that meat is food or that food is a 
 necessary of life. | Or, to use another illustration, he who takes 
 exception to the charge of a judge, who has ruled that a certain 
 case of homicide amounts to wilful murder, certainly thereby, 
 
 * See Note (G). f See Note (H).
 
 A CHARGE. 65 
 
 neither asserts that there is no such oftence as wilful murder, 
 nor yet that murder ought not to be capitally punished, nor yet that 
 the homicide in question was not an offence ; he only questions 
 whether this particular offence amounted to the crime of wilful mur- 
 der. And certainly, it were a strange defence of the judge's charge 
 to say that he had done the criminal no injury by his ruling, inas- 
 much as the jury had acquitted him, and that even had they not 
 done so, it still lay in the power of the sovereign to pardon him. 
 The answer I imagine to such a defence, if we could conceive its 
 being made, would be, that whether he had or had not done harm 
 to the criminal, he certainly had done grievous harm to the law, 
 by giving an incorrect and therefore an illegal definition of it. 
 
 And now to • sum up this discussion. — If it be true that there 
 are expressions in the Athanasian Creed, dealing with the most 
 awful and distressing of subjects, — the conditions of eternal sal- 
 vation, — which by the confession of their most strenuous defenders 
 are not only very generally, but very perilously misunderstood ; and 
 if these same sentences are, by those who most insist on their im- 
 portance, most variously and oppositely interpreted ; if they are 
 confessedly, not the exact words of Scripture, but interpretations 
 and inferences from Scripture ; if they can only be brought 
 within the limits of Scriptural statement by explanations and 
 qualifications which are not all of them either self-evident or 
 necessarily implied in the wording of those sentences, and which 
 to many seem difficult and subtle, if not actually unsound ; if they 
 appear to thousands of Churchmen, either not to convey at all, 
 or most imperfectly to convey, the truth they are said to be 
 designed to teach ; and if their apparent meaning causes deepest 
 pain and distress to many, not merely of the ignorant, but the 
 most learned, most devout, and most pious members of our Church, 
 is it so very " immoral " a thing to ask that these words be re- 
 considered by our Church ? Is there after all any such utter 
 " profligacy " in asking whether justice, charity, wisdom, and, above 
 all, faithfulness to the cause of dogmatic truth itself, may. not 
 require that they should be re-considered ? 
 
 Surely, there is neither wisdom, nor charity, nor justice in meet- 
 ing such a plea as this, simply with an obstinate non posstmms, or 
 worse still, simply with fierce denunciations of all who urge it, as 
 ignorant or dishonest traitors to the Faith. Who, let me ask, 
 best show their love and reverence for the great dogmas of 
 our Faith ? Those, who accepting every word of these dogmas 
 implicitly and explicitly, desire to remove what they know to be a 
 most serious practical hindrance to others doing the same ? Or 
 those, who refusing so much as to touch, or even to entertain the 
 idea of touching with their little fingers this heavy burden, insist 
 on presenting these dogmas in their harshest and most question- 
 able aspect, and thereby provoking against them a reaction which 
 
 F
 
 66 A CHARGE. 
 
 may tell, which is telling, most seriously on the Christian Faith ? 
 For myself, I am neither ashamed nor afraid to take my place 
 amongst those who plead for the alteration of these clauses ; or, if 
 alteration be impossible, for the removal of them from the Creed, 
 of which they are no essential part, and in which their presence as 
 they stand and where they stand, is a real peril to our Church and to 
 Christianity itself. Satisfied I am that such dealing with the Creed, 
 as I beheve it to be the truest, is also the safest and most conser- 
 vative. At least I know of no other way of dealing with it, which 
 does not appear to me open to far graver objections than this. 
 
 An explanatory Rubric seems to me, while it is virtually an 
 alteration of the Creed, to have this fault of its own ; that, being 
 an alteration in the form of a gloss while the text is left unaltered, 
 instead of relieving the difficulty as to the meaning of the text, 
 it only adds to this another difficulty, by requiring all men to 
 accept not merely the dogma in the text, but the dogma of the 
 gloss, whatever that may be ; and with it the additional dogma 
 that this gloss is really the true meaning of the text, whether it 
 seem to them to be so or not ; a proceeding which, however 
 charitably intended, is really in the last degree arbitrary and 
 tyrannical, and which, as regards a Creed, is an intolerable 
 invasion of Christian liberty. Certainly I have seen no ex- 
 planatory Rubric or Synodical declaration, which did not appear 
 to me, so far as I ■<:ould pretend to understand it, infinitely harder 
 of acceptance than any one of the damnatory clauses. 
 
 Hardly less objectionable is the solution of an optional use, 
 which at present finds ^much general acceptance. This proposal 
 seems to me vicious in principle, unfair in operation, and in- 
 effectual for the purpose for which it is designed. It is vicious 
 in principle ; because it makes the preferences of the congregation 
 or of the minister the measure of the Church's duty. If this Creed 
 be, as it is alleged, not only truth, but truth in its most perfect 
 form, then it is the most vital and important of all truth — truth 
 concerning the essential conditions of eternal life. Truth, there- 
 fore, which of all others the Church should proclaim on the house- 
 tops; and truth, moreover, which they who dislike most, for 
 that very reason, evidently most need to have proclaimed to them. 
 To propose that its use should be optional, seems to me as pre- 
 posterous, as to propose that the lighting of a beacon should 
 be optional with the light-keeper, or that the friends of a patient, 
 for whom a physician has prescribed the one and only medicine 
 which can save him, should be told, that although the dislike 
 of the medicine was actually an indication of the dangerous nature 
 of the disease it was to cure, yet that they need not administer 
 it, if the patient showed a strong dislike to it ! If on the other 
 hand, the Creed is not truth in its best form of expression, why 
 not alter the wording of it, so as to remove all reasonable scruples 
 as to its use ? In the next place .; optional use is unfair in operation.
 
 A CHARGE. 67 
 
 because it devolves on each individual clergyman the invidious and 
 difficult task of deciding — what, in that case, the Church would not 
 have had the courage to decide for Herself — whether this Creed 
 should or should not be read. How is he to decide this ? By 
 the vote of his congregation ? And if so, is it to be by that of 
 the majority of the congregation, or of those whom he deems the 
 wisest or the most influential members of it ? By the wish of the 
 Squire against the people, or of the people against the Squire ? 
 And for how long is this doctrinal plebiscite to hold good ? For 
 one year, or more, or less? How often is the parish to be 
 agitated by this Athanasian Creed controversy, and divided into 
 Athanasian and anti-Atha:ip.sian factions, wrangling fiercely about 
 the most sacred mysteries of the Faith ? Is it fair or wise to leave 
 the settlement of such questions as these to the courage or the 
 discretion of every individual clergyman amongst 20,000 ? But if 
 the option lie, not in the congregation, but in the breast of the 
 clergyman only, it will be ineffectual to afford relief to conscience. 
 How, for instance, will it meet the case of a congregation disliking 
 the use of the Creed, and a clergyman insisting on using it : or 
 a clergyman disliking the use, and a congregation claiming it? 
 Will not the option — that is, the personal choice and will of the 
 clergyman — in every case, be just the very thing which will make 
 the use or non-use of the Creed most galling and irritating to 
 those who differ from him as to its use or non-use ? Will con- 
 gregations, who now complain that the Creed is imposed upon 
 them by the law of the Church, like it any the better, when 
 it is imposed upon them by the mere will or caprice of the 
 clergyman ? Will those laymen who demand that its use, " exactly 
 as it is, and where it is," be carefully preserved to them, be better 
 pleased to have this denied to them, not by the voice of the 
 Church, but by the voice of a single presbyter? I must say, that 
 if I were asked to name a device for dealing with the Creed, 
 which combined the minimum of relief with the maximum of 
 risk, I should say that it was this of the optional use. 
 
 And if I deprecate the adoption of this optional use by the 
 Church, still more earnestly do I deprecate its enactment by the 
 State, without the previous assent of the Church. The Creeds, 
 formularies, and rubrics of our Church as they now stand, are 
 the bases of the existing concordat between the Church and the 
 State. Neither party has morally, nor according to the spirit, if 
 not the letter, of the laws of the Church and State, legally the 
 right to alter these without the consent of the other. To do so 
 seems to me a violation of the original compact, which is dangerous 
 to its existence. The change in this case might be of the very 
 smallest, might even supposably be in itself desirable, and yet 
 might involve a great principle, and that all the more perilously, 
 just because the smallness of the change might blind men to 
 the greatness of the principle involved. 
 
 F 2
 
 68 A CHARGE. 
 
 What then, you will ask me, is it that I counsel in this present 
 distress, if I thus deprecate the most popular compromise yet 
 proposed, as well as what seems the simplest and most ready way 
 of giving to that compromise legal validity? My advice may 
 seem, I fear, a very tame one, and utterly contemptible to the more 
 valiant and eager spirits of our day. It is s\m]Ay patience. The 
 mind of the Church, deeply agitated as it is by such a question 
 somewhat suddenly pressed upon it, needs time to inform and to 
 express itself more fully, more deliberately, than it has yet been 
 able to do. The first words of such a controversy as this are not 
 generally the wisest, nor the first aspects of it the clearest. May 
 we not hope that further and fuller discussion may lead to a 
 better understanding of one another's real views and purposes ; 
 may tend to soften passions, and allay fears on either side ; 
 may lead, in short, to that calmer and more charitable temper, 
 in which alone we can hope to have the blessing of the Spirit 
 of God upon our debates ? When, for instance, candid and Chris- 
 tian men, on both sides of this dispute, come to understand, on 
 the one hand, that the desire for some change in the Creed does 
 not necessarily imply lack of faith ; and, on the other hand, that the 
 desire to retain it unchanged comes from no lack of charity ; when 
 they can see that the dogmas of the Faith, and the love without 
 which that Faith is profitless, are equally dear to the combatants 
 on both sides ; that the question between them is not one that 
 touches the essence of the Faith, only the manner in which the 
 Church shall commend the Faith to the acceptance of her chil- 
 dren — may we not hope that they may find some way of settling 
 this grave question, better, happier, safer than that of either 
 party taking the matter hastily and peremptorily " into their own 
 hands," and forcing their solution of it on their opponents. The 
 best, the most logical solution of this difficulty, were dearly bought 
 at such a price as this. If we must come to a struggle, a victory, 
 a schism at the last, so be it, and God show the right ! But surely 
 we need not precipitate it ; surely, we are bound to do all we 
 can to avert it. Six months is not so very long a period to give 
 for the consideration of the use of a Creed which has been in 
 use in our Church for nearly twice as many centuries ; that those 
 who have borne with it all their lives must rush to Parliament 
 next session to demand, at any risk, their immediate deliverance 
 from it. Nor, on the other hand, is this period so ample for 
 deliberation, that at the end of it those who desire to keep the 
 Creed unchanged should have no other answer to the pleadings — 
 the honest, earnest, distressful pleadings — of thousands of their 
 brethren, than this : we will not hear you plead another word ; 
 nothing that you can ever say will in the least change our 
 minds, the Creed shall remain as it is and where it is, now and for 
 ever. 
 
 Once more then I venture to counsel a little longer patience, a
 
 A CHARGE. 69 
 
 little, nay, a great deal more of counsel and conference, before we 
 attempt to come to a final decision on a question so important and 
 so difficult. The outside world will, of course, in that case have its 
 scoff at our indecision and our timidity. Politicians, whose first 
 maxim it is, not to legislate on any question of importance for the 
 State before public opmion has ripened on it, may have their sneer 
 at those who wish to legislate on like conditions for the Church. 
 We are not, however, gready concerned to please such critics. 
 The peace of the Church, nay, the spiritual interests of the very 
 humblest of her members, are of infinitely greater importance to 
 Her than a wilderness of newspaper articles. 
 
 Nor, do I beheve, that the longer discussion of this question would 
 necessarily be so hurtful to the Church that we must needs hastily 
 shut it up in some one conclusion or other. On the contrary, I 
 believe that it may be God's will that this discussion, as to the 
 terms of our Faith and the conditions of our salvation, may have 
 the effect of turning the mind of the Church, in these days of 
 lax belief and daring unbelief, to the deeper consideration of 
 those fundamental verities of the Christian Faith which she holds 
 in trust for the world; may be leading us to weigh, to prove, 
 to grasp once more with a firmer grasp, each one of those great 
 dogmas which the Creed defines ; to ascertain more clearly and 
 definitely, if possible, what are the true relations between belief 
 and salvation. As each party in this dispute insists, the one on 
 the infinite importance of the Faith i?i which we believe, and the 
 other on the infinite importance of the faith by which we believe, 
 may we not hope that the weapons, rusted somewhat perhaps, 
 from disuse, which are thus being taken down and sharpened 
 afresh for the present conflict, may yet hang side by side in their 
 renewed keenness and brightness, in the armoury of the Church, 
 ready for use against the common enemy? 
 
 Let us hope that it may be so. For these are times in which 
 the Church can ill afford to lose one weapon from her armoury, 
 one soldier from her ranks. In all her long struggle with " the evil 
 that is in the world," never did she more need all her united 
 energies than she does at this moment. The kingdom of darkness 
 seems in our day to have had its season of special revival cor- 
 responding to that of the kingdom of light. Its forces, as they 
 gather from all sides to the assault upon the city of God, seem 
 animated by a keener spirit, both of hate and of hope. The cold 
 sneering Deism of the last century, cold as the orthodoxy that it 
 combated ; the more earnest, and at first, more reverent scepticism 
 of the earlier part of this century — which, if anti-Christian in its 
 doubts, was still religious in its aspirations — are fast giving place 
 to _an active aggressive hostility to all Religion, and especially 
 to Christianity, as the prava siiperstitio which is the chief 
 hindrance to the " progress of humanity " towards the millenium 
 of materiahsm. And this speculative atheism, this spiritual
 
 70 A CHARGE, 
 
 wickedness, animated as it is by a passionate and fanatical hatred 
 to Christ and to His faith, is reviving and strengthening its old 
 alliance with the practical godlessness, the mere brute materialism of 
 our fallen nature, which hates Religion as it hates Law, as it hates 
 Society itself, because these are but so many forms of restraint 
 on the appetites and the passions of the animal man. The war 
 cry of the Pantheist, the Atheist, and the Secularist, " Let there 
 be no God," is being answered by the cry of the multitude, " Let 
 us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.'' And as these join their 
 forces for the assault on our Zion, what is it that animates them 
 most with hopes of success? It is this, that from our camp 
 they hear, not the answering war-song of a united host, but 
 the voices of fratricidal strife ; the very Temple ringing, as of 
 old, with the battle-cries of the parties that strive for its exchi- 
 sive possession, forgetful of their common enemy at the gates. 
 No wonder that they promise themselves an easy victory ! No 
 wonder that they tell us that no assault of theirs is needed for our 
 overthrow ; that they have but to wait, and this discordant and dis- 
 tracted Christianity must perish of its own dissensions ! Is it so ? 
 Must it be so ? Must it be, that our unhappy divisions shall at once 
 encourage our enemies, and banish from amongst us our only true 
 defence — the presence of the Prince of Peace ? Must it be, that for 
 us, too, there shall be heard at last, the awful " Let us depart hence ! " 
 which shall leave the Temple of our Faith a deserted shrine, no 
 longer defensible, because we shall have made it no longer 
 worth defending? Or shall the presence of a common danger 
 rouse us, one and all, to the sense of a common duty, and a 
 common Faith ? Shall the fierce and still fiercer attacks that are 
 being made on Christianity itself draw, ere it is too late, nearer 
 to each other all Christian men ? 
 
 Shall it be that as thus Ave draw our ranks closer and closer still 
 around the innermost citadel of our Faith, we shall see, more 
 clearly still, that which it enshrines — a Gross. and a Grave. A 
 cross on which hung the Saviour whose last prayer was that 
 His disciples might be one — a grave from which streamed forth, 
 on the day of the Resurrection, that light of life in which, and 
 by which, we all may be one. A cross on which we might learn 
 to crucify the carnal affections, the pride, the self-love, the self- 
 will from which spring so many of our contentions — a grave in 
 which we might agree to bury the folded and forgotten swathings 
 of our party divisions. A cross which if we could but agree to 
 lift up, but for one hour, with united hands, might once more 
 draw all men unto Him who died upon it — a grave from which, 
 if we could but bend over it widi united gaze of adoring love, 
 we should draw such " power of His Resurrection " as would enable 
 us to raise the world's dead to life. 
 
 It may be that this shall be the blessing we shall win from our 
 encounter with the perils of these perilous times. Cheaply pur-
 
 A CHARGE. 71 
 
 chased it would surely be, by greater dangers, by far sorer, trials 
 than any that have yet fallen to our lot ; nay, by sufferings and 
 persecutions even, such. as maybe in store for the Church in times 
 less distant than perhaps we like to think. That it may be so, that 
 the ark of the Lord, borne by our weak and often trembling hands 
 into the battle of our day, fall not into the possession of His ene- 
 mies, let us strive and pray each one of us. For we have each 
 of us his share in determining the result. The faith and the life of 
 the Church is but the sum of the faith and the life that is in each 
 one of her members. The prayers and the labours, the hopes and 
 the fears, the successes and the failures of every one of us, are 
 telling every one of them on the issues of this great struggle. 
 
 As you separate from this our place of meeting, to return 
 to the posts assigned you, by the Captain of our Salvation, 
 you go to enter once more into a combat to which your whole 
 lives have been, by your own free choice, devoted, and which 
 demands from you all of courage and wisdom, all of self-denial 
 and energy you possess. As you go forth again to war with 
 ignorance, crime, vice, sorrow, suffering — sin in all its varied forms, 
 what word can I, who have been called under God, to lead, to 
 counsel, to exhort you in this fight — what word of warning more 
 solemn, of encouragement more cheering, can I speak to you or to 
 myself, than this, we are Cross-bearers J The Standard that we 
 bear aloft into the strife still bears its old inscription. In hoc 
 signo' vinces. But the Cross which we thus uplift, we must first 
 have, borne for ourselves. The Christ we preach, we must 
 first have known as our own Saviour. If we thus preach and thus 
 live, then, where we found our first strength, there shall we find 
 its constant renewal. For the daily toil of our daily task, with 
 all its disheartening weariness, its trying disappointments, its de- 
 l^ressing sense of comparative failure; for the greater conflicts, too, 
 and trials of our ministry, with their sudden pressure of unforeseen 
 difficulties, their sharper anxieties, their keener hopes and fears; 
 for all these there is one, and but one, never-failing source of 
 comfort and of help, one place alone where we may renew our 
 strength — it is at the foot of the Cross. There, as we kneel and 
 pray — there, as we kneel and hope — there, as we kneel and vow — 
 as we offer ourselves once more, in the love of our hearts, in the 
 labour of our lives, as willing sacrifices unto God — will there 
 come into our hearts the peace, born, not of ease and comfort but 
 of a death agony of fear and yet of faith, the peace which came 
 of the vision, seen from afar, of the accomphshed travail of the 
 soul of Him who died to win it for us. And with that peace will 
 come the strength it gives, the strength of a heart at one with 
 God, strong in its resolve to do or to suffer His Holy will, asking 
 of Him but one thing, to be better taught what that will may be. 
 
 I pray for you, my dear and Reverend Brethren ; I ask your 
 prayers for me, that more and more of this peace, of this strength
 
 72 ' A CHARGE. 
 
 may be ours ; that our crucified and risen Lord may fill us 
 more and more with the spirit of His Cross, and with the Might of 
 His Resurrection. So that having done, in His Name, and for His 
 sake, the task He has given us to do ; our day's work ended ; our 
 shortcomings, our mistakes, our sins in the doing of it, forgiven of 
 His infinite mercy; our successes owned and rewarded of His 
 not less infinite goodness ; we may, each in his appointed time, 
 enter into the rest and the joy of our Lord.
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Note A. 
 
 Analysis of Returns to Visitation Queries. 
 Number of Churches from which Returns were made, 533. 
 
 Churches having service on any week-days ... 
 
 Churches having daily service 
 
 Churches having service on Ascension Day 
 
 Churches having Holy Communion less frequently than once a month 
 
 Churches having Holy Communion weekly 
 
 Churches having collections for Foreign and Home Missions ... 
 
 Churches restored since last Visitation 
 
 Churches built or rebuilt since last Visitation 
 
 Total amount of voluntary contributions for Church Building and 
 
 Restoration 
 
 Parishes having no lay agency other than that of Sunday School Teachers 
 
 Parishes in which Parochial Councils exist ... 
 
 No. of Church Schools in the Diocese ... 
 
 No. of Parishes from which no returns were made ofnwmber of Scholars .. 
 
 No. of Scholars , , 
 
 No. of Sunday Schools 
 
 No. of Parishes from which no returns made of number of Scholars 
 
 No. of Scholars 
 
 No. of Schools built or enlarged since last Visitation 
 
 Amount of voluntary contributions to these ... 
 
 No. of Schools inspected by Government since passing of Education 
 
 Act, 1871 
 
 No. of Schools respecting which reports have been received from 
 
 Government Inspectors 
 
 No. accepted as Public Elementary Schools under the Act 
 
 No. of School Boards formed 
 
 No. of Church Schools rented or assigned to School Boards 
 
 252 
 36 
 
 378 
 
 187 
 33 
 
 391 
 77 
 12 
 
 £149,000 
 
 387 
 
 29 
 
 542 
 
 70 
 
 46,410 
 
 491 
 
 80 
 
 40,453 
 
 105 
 
 £31,317 
 
 276 
 
 224 
 
 19 
 
 5
 
 ii. APPENDIX. 
 
 Note B. — The Compulsory Church Bates Abolition Act (31 and 32 Vict. c. 
 109) .provides for the forrtiation of "A Body of Trustees" who "may be appointed 
 in any parish for the purpose of accepting by Bequest, Donation, Contract, or 
 otherwise, and of holding any contributions wliich may be given to them for 
 Ecclesiastical purposes in the parish. 
 
 The Trustees shall consist of the Incumbent and two householders, or owners, 
 or occupiers of land in the parish, to be chosen in the first instance, and also from 
 time to time, on any vacancy in the office by death, incapacity, or resignation, 
 one by the patron and the other by the Bishop of the Diocese in which the parish 
 is situate. The Trustees shall be a body corporate by the name of the Church 
 Trustees of the parish to which they belong, having a perpetual succession and a 
 common seal to sue and be sued in their corporate name. 
 
 The Trustees may, from time to time, as circumstances may require, pay 
 over to the Churchwardens, to be applied by them either to the general Ecclesi- 
 astical purposes of the parish, or to any specific Ecclesiastical purposes of the 
 parish, any funds in their hands. They may also invest in Government or Real 
 Securities any funds in their hands, and accumulate the income thereof or 
 otherwise deal with such funds as they think expedient, subject to the provisions 
 of this Act. The Incumbent shall be the chairman of the Trustees. 
 
 Note C. — Were we to enter into a discussion of the theory of Catholic consent, 
 as the infallible source of Dogma and Ritual, we would have to discuss the follow- 
 ing questions : — 
 
 1. Whether it can be proved that our Lord's promise to his Church neces- 
 sarilj' implies infallibility, and not rather indestructibility, immunity that is from 
 l^erpetual error and not perpetual immunity from error ? 
 
 2. Whether, granting that our Lord's words are a promise of infallibihty, 
 they guarantee this infallibility to general councils, that is to say, whether the 
 promise that the Church universal shall never en- necessarily means that a majority 
 of a minority of her Bishops assembled under certain conditions shall never err ? 
 
 3. And if so, whether there is any infallible definition of these conditions of 
 infalhbility ; any infallible criteria, that is to say, by which a true general council 
 may be distinguished from a council falsely claiming that title ? 
 
 4. If the decrees of general councils depend for their validity upon Catholic 
 consent, what is it that constitutes time Catholicity of consent. Wlicther it is that 
 of the majority of Christians, or the absolute and literal totality of Christians all 
 over the world ? 

 
 APPENDIX. iii. 
 
 5. "Whether, on either of these suppositions, such Catholic consent has ever 
 been ascertained, or ever could be ascertained, for any doctrine whatever ? 
 
 6. Whether, therefore, the famous Vincentian rule qiiod semper, quod nhique, 
 quod ah omnibus, ever proved, or could prove, anything except perhaps the exist- 
 ence of a God, and whether the attempt to define the " omnes," whose assent is 
 to be the test of truth, does not involve us in this difficulty, that if these '' all" 
 are all those who "profess and call themselves Christians," the definition would 
 include Heretics, and if the "all" are those only who are true Catholics, then we 
 have got into the vicious circle, of first defining the Catholic Faith to be that 
 which is assented to by all true Catholics, and then defining all true Catholics to 
 be those who assent to the true Catholic Faith ? 
 
 7. And, lastly, we might ask whether, even granting the Vincentian Eule 
 to be applicable to questions of Faith, any Church in Christendom ever held it 
 applicable to questions of Ritual, and to be applied to these according to the 
 private judgment of every individual Priest or Deacon in any Church National ? 
 
 Note D. — Those who claim this extraordinary right for each individual Priest 
 in our Church are especially fond of appeahng to the XXX. Canon of our Church, 
 in which they maintain that this right is expressly conceded. The passage in the 
 Canon thus appealed to is as follows : — " Nay, so far was it from the purpose of 
 the Church of England to forsake and reject the Churches of Italy, France, Spain, 
 Germany, or any such like Churches, in all things which they held and practised, 
 that, as the Apology of the Church of England confesseth, it doth with reverence 
 retain those ceremonies, which do neither endamage the Church of God, nor offend 
 the minds of sober men ; and only depart from them in those particular points, 
 wherein they were fallen both from themselves in their ancient integrity, and 
 from the Apostolical Churches, which were their first founders." 
 
 The meaning of these words seems to me perfectly clear. Our Church, in 
 defending herself for enjoining a ceremony which is also enjoined by the Church 
 of Rome, defines the principle on which her Prayer Book is framed, namely, that 
 it is that of not departing from other Churches "in all things," but only in those 
 points wherein they are fallen from themselves in their ancient integrity and from 
 the Apostolic Churches, and of retaining all ceremonies that are not either 
 endamaging to the Church or offensive to sober men. The natural irrference from 
 these words is, that every ceremony not retained by our Church is in her judgment 
 either of dangerous tendency or offensive to sober men. The Prayer Book is for 
 us the expression, and the only expression, of her mind on this point as regards
 
 iv. APPENDIX. 
 
 every ceremony omitted or retained by her. Wherever in that book she has not 
 departed from other Churches, there we infer, she regards them as not having 
 fallen from their ancient integrity ; where she does depart from them, there, we 
 infer, that either she does regard them as having so fallen, or that she regards the 
 omitted ceremony as endamaging to the Church. And the more desirous she 
 shows herself in this Canon, not needlessly to differ from other Churches, the 
 stronger is the inference that where she does differ from them it is for that reason 
 which she declares alone justifies such difference. 
 
 To say, therefore, that our Church, in thus justifying her differences from other 
 Churches by declaring that she only differs from them where she thinks them 
 corrupt, thereby authorizes every individual Priest in her Communion to 
 adopt the ceremonies of any other Church, wherever he thinks* them not 
 corrupt, is one of the most astounding inferences ever drawn from human 
 language. 
 
 I cannot bring myself seriously to discuss this extraordinary confusion between 
 a statement of the principles embodied in certain laws, and a permission to every 
 individual to set aside those laws whenever they shall seem to him at variance 
 with that princijile. But I cannot help asking, if our Church really meant to 
 grant, in her Thirtieth Canon, such a license as this, what was the need for this 
 elaborate defence of her difference from other Churches ? Her obvious defence 
 in that case would have been, that whatever difference might arise in any parti- 
 cular case would be none of her making, for that as far as she was concerned, 
 anything that was done in any other Church might be done in the Church of 
 England, each one of her Clergy being perfectly free to compile for himself, from 
 the Service Books of other Churches, Ms own eclectic and Catholic use, any thing 
 in her Prayer Book to the contrary notwithstanding. 
 
 Note E. — The amount of Catholic consent, which the Athanasian Creed has 
 received, is stated by my much esteemed friend, the Dean of Norwich, with his 
 usual clearness and candour, to be that of " all Western Christendom and of some 
 of the Eastern Churches," though these latter receive it, as Waterland tells us, 
 "curtailed of the article of the Procession." The Dean is far too fair a contro- 
 versalist not to add, " that this is not indeed the consent of Christendom, such as 
 the Nicene Creed can boast of having received, but it will be admitted that it is 
 next door to it." " Next door" to consent, however, I am sure the Dean would 
 further admit is not Catholic consent, and is not, therefore, a sufficient warrant 
 for giving to the Athanasian Creed the title of a Creed of the Catholic Church.
 
 APPENDIX. V. 
 
 Note F. — The presumption of demanding- the same assent, and with the 
 same penalties for refusing it, for our deductions from an Article of the Faith, as 
 for the Faith itself, is denoimced by Jeremy Taylor in words that seem almost 
 prophetic of our present Athanasian controversy. " "Whatsoever is added to it" 
 (the Faith) ''is either contained in the Article virtually, or it is not. If not, then 
 it is no part of the Faith, and by the laws of Faith there is no obligation passed on 
 any man to believe it ; but if it be, then he that believes the Article does virtually 
 believe all that is virtually contained in it : but no man is to be pressed with the con- 
 sequence drawn from thence ; unless the transcript be drawn by the same hand that 
 wrote the original. For we are sure that it came in the simplicity of it from an in- 
 falKble Spirit ; but he that bids me believe his deductions, under pain of damnation, 
 bids me, under pain of damnation, believe that he is an unerring- logician ; for which, 
 because God has given me no command, and himself can give me no security, if I 
 can defend myself from that man's pride, God will defend me from damnation. * 
 
 Note G. — A striking instance of this fallacy, as it appears to me, is to be 
 found in the pamphlet on the Athanasian Creed, by the Dean of Norwich, from 
 which I have already quoted, and from which I now quote again, in the way of 
 argument, because I have no fear of offending, by fair criticism, one whom I am 
 happy to call my friend, and because the fulness and precision with which the 
 Dean states his case make it quite a crucial test of the value of the argument on 
 which he rests it. 
 
 The Dean supposes the case of a Clergyman preaching a sermon on the text, 
 *' Be not deceived, thieves shall not inherit the kingdom of God," 1. Cor. vi. 10, 
 and proceeding therefrom "to explain to his congregation what a thief is." He 
 accordingly describes certain acts of alleged dishonesty, as for instance, '' stealing 
 from God," by not giving a sufficient proportion of means to works of charity and 
 piety ; " stealing from men," in various ways of fraud and dishonesty, and then 
 reminding his congregation that those who are guilty of such thefts could not 
 "inherit the kingdom of God." This particular application of a general warning 
 of Scripture the Dean, with much ingenuity, insists on as exactly parallel to the 
 teaching of the Church in the Athanasian Creed, in which she first recites the 
 general warning "that Faith in Christ is indispensably necessary," and then 
 proceeds to " give those particulars of the Universal Faith which he who exercises 
 Faith must beheve." 
 
 On this I have to observe, that it is a perfectly valid argument against 
 
 * Bishop Jeremy Taylor, vol. x., pp. 469, 70. Ed. Heber, 1828.
 
 vi. APPENDIX. 
 
 those, if there are any such, who deny that it is within the competence of the 
 Church to make any particular application whatsoever of the general warnings in 
 Scripture against unbelief ; but, that it is no argument whatever against those who, 
 admitting the Church's right to make such an apphcation, only question whether 
 in every instance in the Athanasian Creed it has been rightly made. The congre- 
 gation, whom the Dean supposes to have assembled to criticise the preacher's 
 sermon, would certainly have no right to complain "of Ids sending to Hell every' 
 Sunday" every one of them whose case he could fairly bring within the scope of 
 his text, but they might be allowed to question, whether every one of the cases 
 he cited did come within that scope. For instance, had I been one of the 
 imaginary congregation, I should certainly have questioned, whether deficient 
 subscriptions to charities, was really thieving, in the sense in which thieving is 
 denounced in the text or in the Eighth Commandment, inasmuch as it wants that 
 animus ftirandi which, as it seems to me, is of the essence of the sin of theft ; and 
 I should, therefore, have cited this particular part of the sermon as an instance of 
 the danger which lurks in all particular applications of general warnings. 
 
 The fallacy in the Dean's argument is this ; that in the case of his imaginary 
 preacher he has framed for him certain categories of offences which the 
 Dean regards as unquestionably legitimate applications of his text. But he 
 has forgotten to observe— first ; that some might question, as I have ventured 
 to do, the legitimacy even of some of those appKcations, without thereby denying 
 the Divine authority of the general warning itself ; and, secondly ; that, granting 
 that these were all correctly made, it by no means follows that certain other 
 applications of certain other general warnings, are each and all of them made 
 with equal correctness. 
 
 Note H. — The fallacy which I have thus illustrated is the well known one of 
 the undistributed or ambiguous middle "tenn. When I say : — 
 
 Correct Faith is essential to Salvation. 
 
 Faith, in all the particulars in the Athanasian Creed, is correct Faith. 
 
 Therefore Faith, in all the particulars in the Athanasian Creed, is essential 
 to Salvation. 
 I use a syllogism precisely parallel to this : 
 
 Food is a necessary of life. 
 
 Meat is food. 
 
 Therefore meat is a necessary of life. 
 The falseness of the conclusion is apparent in this latter case, and the argu-
 
 APPENDIX. vii. 
 
 ment, in each case, is disposed of by simply adding to the major premiss the 
 necessary word "some." SoTm food is essential to life and some degree of 
 correctness of Faith is essential to Salvation. But then it will no more follow from 
 this latter proposition, that Faith in any given dogma, though correct, is essential 
 to Salvation, than it follows from the former that any- particular kind of food, 
 though truly food, is essential to life. This can only be proved by an examina- 
 tion into the nature of the proposition in the one case and of the food in the other, 
 and of their relation to the life they respectively sustain. 
 
 E. E. Peach, i'rinter, 8, Bridge Street, Bath.
 

 
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