"Dean Critical thought not, because in fact, the sum of its decisions amounted to this—that the Church of England taught nothing and denied nothing, which was equivalent to saying that she believed nothing. A tribunal which decided in every case of disputed doctrine, as the privy council invariably did, that both the plaintiff and defendant were right, was a judicial curiosity that could hardly be said to afford the litigant parties much assistance in bringing their cause to an issue. The privy council might be an authorityoverthe Church of England, whose decisions the latter was obliged to receive; but no one could seriously maintain that it was an authority to which any Anglican, of whatever party in the church, professed to submit his conscience in matters of faith.
"Archdeacon Jolly: 'Will you accept convocation as your authority?' (Loud laughter, with cries of 'shame' from Dean Pompous.)
"Dean Critical regretted that he could not accept convocation in the character of an Anglican Holy See: because, to say nothing of the general feeling of the country, and the malicious comments of the public press, which appeared to treat them with derision, and talked of their 'dancing round a may-pole,' his own observation of the proceedings of that assembly dissuaded him from any such view. Much experience had brought him to the sorrowful conviction that convocation was only a clerical debating-club, of which every member took himself for the pope, and the church for his pupil.
"Archdeacon Jolly: 'Might it be permitted to suggest the formularies?'
"Dean Critical: So supple and elastic in their nature as to be sworn to with equal facility both by those who claim to 'hold all Roman doctrine' and those who protest against it.
"Archdeacon Jolly: 'Well, there are still the thirty-nine articles.'
"Dean Critical: Thirty-nineopinions, one of which declares of all others, that they are human and fallible.
"Archdeacon Jolly did not know that he could offer any further suggestion, but, at least, one of the articles declared, 'the churchhathauthority in matters of faith.'
"Dean Critical was not unmindful of the fact, which had always appeared to him to be a device of the framers to express this idea: 'We admit that the church we are forminghasno authority, but we recognize that if it were a church, itwouldhave authority.' For it should be observed that while they said, 'the churchhathauthority,' they at the same time enjoined the clergy not to believe a single word she taught them, unless they found their own interpretation of the Scriptures to agree with hers! Thus they made the Church of England say to all her members: 'If you should accidentally berightin your interpretation of the Bible, put that down tome, for I am the church that teaches you; but if, which is far more probable, you should be wrong, put that down to yourself, for I have warned you to believe in nothing which you cannot prove for yourself out of the Bible.' ('Hear, hear,' from the Rev. Lavender Kidds.)"
This Rev. Lavender Kidds is the comic man of the drama. His one principle is "Bible Christianity," his one passion a dread of the pope.
"The Rev. Lavender Kidds (who seemed much excited, and rose amidst cries of 'order, order,' and considerable laughter) observed that he now assisted for the first time at the assembly of convocation, and had been deeply shocked by the unscriptural tone of the discussion.(Suppressed merriment.) For his part, he gloried in the thirty-nine articles of their pure and reformed church, and especially in their noble testimony to the grand truth that the religion of Protestants was 'the Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible.' This was the true 'authority' of vital Christians, and he cared for no other. This was the simple and grand lesson of those venerable formularies which had been that day so grievously under-valued and calumniated. Really, it seemed to him to be preposterous in any Protestant assembly to talk so much of 'church-authority.' Authority, indeed! Who wanted it? And if they had it, who would obey it? Certainly no member of that house with whom he had the happiness of being acquainted—(laughter and ironical cheers)—least of all the high-church party, who had recently been forming a society to protect themselvesagainsttheir bishops. (Renewed disapprobation.) He contended that their forefathers had done without authority, and had wisely regarded it as a mark of the beast. He was for the Bible and the Bible only. Perish the articles, and the church itself—no, his zeal was perhaps carrying him too far. What he meant to say was—in fact, he wished to observe—as long as they had the Word they wanted nothing else. He knew, indeed, that Dean Primitive and Archdeacon Chasuble preferred authority to Scripture—as long, that was, as they could keep the former entirely in their own hands; but he had invariably remarked that they refused to their bishops and superiors the obedience they required from their curates and parishioners. But Englishmen, he felt convinced, were not to be cajoled by a spurious popery; and if they must renounce their liberty, it would not be to those who used that liberty themselves to resist the very church they copied, in everything but their obedience. (General cries of 'Enough, enough,' amid which Mr. Kidds resumed his seat, with the air of one who had delivered a solemn and suitable protest.')
"Dean Primitive was unwilling that the observations of Mr. Kidds should pass without any other reply than Dean Blunt had thought fit to give them. He had spent thirty years of his life in combating the errors of that party in the church to which Mr. Kidds belonged, and he hoped to continue the same holy warfare to to the end. He was aware that the so-called evangelicals insisted upon theplainnessof Scripture, and were accustomed to assume, with strange disregard of notorious facts, that nobody need find any difficulty in deciding the true meaning of any text whatever. With the permission of the house, he would give a few illustrations of the evangelical method of dealing with the inspired book; from which it would very clearly appear, that when they boasted of appealing to the Bible, they only appealed to their own version of it, that is, to themselves; and their favorite shibboleth, 'the Bible, and the Bible only,' meant simply, as Dean Blunt had well observed, 'myinterpretation of the Bible, and not yours.'
"Thus, when our Lord said to his priests, 'I give toyouthe keys of the kingdom of heaven,' it is plain, according to the evangelicals, that he meant, 'I give tono manthe keys of the kingdom of heaven.'
"When He declared, 'Whosesoever sinsyouremit, they are remitted,' beyond doubt he wished them to understand, 'I particularly withhold fromyouthe power to remit sin.'
"When he gave the promise to his church, 'I am with you always, even to the end of the world,' manifestly he designed to say, 'I am with you only to the end of the third or fourth century, after which I shall desert you until the sixteenth.'
"When he announced, 'I will send the Holy Ghost, and he shall guide you intoalltruth,' it is clearer than the day that he wished to tell them, 'The Holy Ghost will teach you just so much of truth as each individual can gather from the private study of the Scriptures.'
"When he made the wonderful statement, 'The gates of hell shallneverprevail against the church,' even children can see that he meant, 'Hell shall triumph over the church for eight hundred years and more.'"
The question is raised whether the Fathers and the first four General Councils cannot be taken as guides, and it is shown that they are as hard to interpret as the Bible itself. But cannot the clergy be appealed to as authorized interpreters? In replying to this query, the professor of theology said:
"There was not, he conceived, in the annals of human religion—of which the number was now almost beyond arithmetical calculation—so singular a paradox as that which was displayed in Puseyite theology. The claims of a Leo the Great, or a Gregory the Seventh, which, at least, whatever Protestants might think of them, were cordially admitted both in their own generation and in those which followed it, were only the utterances of timid self-abasement, compared with the super-oecumenical dogmatism of their high-church friends. 'Obey me,' said these gentlemen to their disciples, 'for obedience is the prerogative of the laity; but I obey nobody except my own interpretation of the fathers, or of such of them as I approve, because my church is not yet sufficiently catholic to deserve my obedience. At present I am obliged to create a church for you, because nothing worthy of the name is found just now on earth. The day will come when she will have been sufficiently taught by me, will cease to be Protestant without becoming Roman, and then I shall be able to obey the church, because, having learned from me the exact form of primitive Christianity, which exists nowhere at present but in my own ideal conception, the church will have come again into corporate existence, and will be worthy of your dutiful regard. It will then no longer be necessary for me, as it is unfortunately at present, to cumulate in my own person the functions of the pope, the saints, the fathers, the general councils, and Almighty God.'
"(Considerable agitation followed this speech, during which the sitting was suspended for some minutes.)
"The Rev. Lavender Kidds observed, as soon as the composure of the assembly was restored, that, however forcible the remarks of the learned professor might be as applied to Puseyism, he had shown that he was unwilling to grapple with the grand principle of Bible Christianity, of which he was the humble advocate.
"The professor intended no disrespect to Mr. Kidds and his party. Bible Christianity, since he must speak of it, (though he thought that former speakers had sufficiently disposed of the subject,) was only less preposterous than the rival theory which he had just ventured to describe. It required personal infallibility in all who professed it. It simply transferred to the individual the supernatural prerogative which the Romanist attributed to his church.It was obvious to common sense that, if Mr. Kidds could interpret a particular translation of the Scriptures, so as to know infallibly both how much was necessary to be salvation, and exactly what was necessary to believed about it, he must himself be personally infallible.
"The professor must decline to give his own opinion, though of course he had one, on the question proposed by Dr. Easy; but he had no objection to state how he conceived it ought to be answered by the so-called Bible-Christian. That answer might be as follows:
"The existence of a church assumes the existence of a God; therefore, the denial of a God would be the same with the denial of a church. But the Church of England is a fact. Her teaching may be doubtful or contradictory, but her existence as a politico-ecclesiastical institution, professing belief in a God, is beyond dispute. It would, therefore, be heresy in the Bible Christian to deny the existence of a God; but it was quite open to him to believe in anykindof divinity he might prefer, and to clothe him with whatever attributes the Privy Council had permitted him to retain. …
"Archdeacon Jolly doubted whether the universalNegoof Mr. Kidds and his friends could combat successfully the eternalCredoof two hundred millions of Catholics. However, he was quite willing to consider Mr. Kidd's proposition; but he must be excused if he did so from his own point of view.
"There was a large class of persons in this country," continued the archdeacon, "who, having no definite religion of their own, and being slenderly endowed with common sense, were indebted to the Roman Catholic Church both for employment and maintenance. Let Mr. Kidds restrain his excitement; he would explain his meaning. He did not, of course, include Mr. Kidds among the class in question, though he believed that gentleman would willingly accept the statement of Sterne, who candidly confessed, that, 'when he had little to say or little to give his people, he had resource to the abuse of popery. Hence he called it his "Cheshire Cheese." It had a twofold advantage; it cost him very little, and he found by experience that nothing satisfied so well the hungry appetites of his congregation. They always devoured it greedily.'
"Perhaps Mr. Kidds was not aware that in his zeal to hasten the downfall of popery—which, even according to modern prophets, had still a few years to last, and which, judging by a recent tour he had made on the continent, presented anything but a moribund aspect—he was in violent opposition with many active and devoted Protestants. The persons to whom he alluded were, at this moment, full of anxiety lest popery should perish too soon! They could not afford to say farewell to their old friend at present, and desired only to keep him on his legs a little longer. Mr. Kidds was probably ignorant that a society had recently been formed in London, in connection, he believed, with the Protestant Reformation Society, to which it was designed to act as a timely and important auxiliary. The title of this new association was:'Society for considering the best means of keeping alive the corruptions of Popery in the interests of Gospel Truth'It was, of course, a strictly secret organization, but he had been favored, he knew not why, with a copy of the prospectus, and as he had no intention of becoming a member, he would communicate it to the house.It appeared from this document, and could be confirmed from other sources, that a deputation was sent last year to Rome, to obtain a private interview with the pope, in order to entreat his holinessnotto reform a single popish corruption. He was assured that they had reason to believe, he did not know on what grounds, that the pope was about to make extensive reforms, beginning with the substitution of the thirty-nine articles for the creed of Pope Pius, and a permanent Anglican convocation in lieu of an occasional oecumenical council. A handsome present was entrusted to the deputation, and a liberal contribution to the Peter's Pence Fund. The motives set forth in the preamble of the address presented to his holiness were, in substance, of the following nature: They urged that a very large body of most respectable clergymen, who had no personal ill-will toward the present occupant of the Holy See, had maintained themselves and their families in comfort for many years exclusively by the abuse of popery; and if popery were taken away, they could not but contemplate the probable results with uneasiness and alarm. Moreover, many eminent members of the profession had gained a reputation for evangelical wit, learning, and piety, as well as high dignities in the Church of England, by setting forth in their sermons and at public meetings, with all their harrowing details, the astounding abominations of the Church of Rome. The petitioners implored his holiness not to be indifferent to the position of these gentlemen. Many of their number had privately requested the deputation to plead their cause with the amiable and benevolent Pius IX. Thus the great and good Doctor M'Nickel represented respectfully that he had filled his church, and let all his pews, during three-and-twenty years, by elegantly slandering priests and nuns, and powerfully illustrating Romish superstitions. A clergyman of noble birth had attained to the honors of the episcopate by handling alternately the same subjects, and a particularly pleasing doctrine of the Millennium, and had thus been enabled to confer a valuable living on his daughter's husband, who otherwise could not have hoped to obtain one. An eminent canon of an old Roman Catholic abbey owed his distinguished position, which he hoped to be allowed to retain, to the fact of his having proved so clearly that the pope was Antichrist; and earnestly entreated his holiness to do nothing to forfeit that character. A well-known doctor of Anglican divinity was on the point of quitting the country in despair of gaining a livelihood, when the idea of preaching against popery was suggested to him, and he had now reason to rejoice that he had abandoned the foolish scheme of emigration. Even a high-church bishop had been so hampered by suspicions of Romanistic tendencies, which were perfectly unfounded, that he had only saved himself from general discredit by incessant abuse of popery, though he was able to say, in self-defence, that he did not believe a word of his own invectives. Finally, a young clergyman, who had not hitherto much distinguished himself, having often but vainly solicited a member of his congregation to favor his evangelical attachment, at length hit upon a new expedient, and preached so ravishing a discourse on the matrimonial prohibitions of the Romish Church, and drew so appalling a picture of the domestic infelicities of the Romish priesthood, that on the following Monday morning the young lady made him an offer of her hand and fortune.It was hoped that his holiness would give due consideration to interests so grave and manifold, and not peril them by hasty reforms, which nobody desired, and which nobody would receive with satisfaction.
"Another class of clergymen appealed still more urgently to the forbearance of the pope. They represented that they were in the habit of realizing large sums by the publication of prophetical works of which the whole interest turned upon the approximate destruction of 'the beast,' and that while they indicated, by the help of the apocalypse, the precise hour of his fall, they yet managed to put off the final catastrophe from year to year, and could hardly supply the successive editions which the curiosity of the public demanded. They hoped that his holiness would do nothing rash and imprudent which might compromise their particular industry. One of these gentlemen ingenuously confessed that without Antichrist, who was his best friend, and the invaluable book of Revelation, which was his chief source of income, he saw nothing before him but the workhouse. He begged to forward to the pope a copy of each of his works, including the following: 'Horns of the Beast,' neatly bound, with gilt edges; 'Antichrist,' handsomely got up, 'positively his last appearance in 1864, in consequence of other engagements,' with new editions in 1865, 1866, and 1867; also, 'Answer to an insolent pamphlet, entitled the "TheNumber and Streetof the Beast proved to be that of the Rev. Dr. Comeagain."'
"Lastly, even members of parliament to whom nature had not been prodigal in intellectual endowments, urged with great force that they were able to get on their legs, and to stay there, detailing the prodigious incidents of conventual turpitude; making the blood to curdle, and the hair to stand on end, by thrilling narratives of nuns immured, and clanking chains, and bereaved mothers, invoking in agonized chorus, 'Liberty and Mr. Newdegate.' They hoped the pope would see in this fact the necessity of caution, lest he should unwittingly put to silence more than one independent member of parliament, deprive an illustrious assembly of its chief amusement, and rashly change the composition of the British House of Commons.
"Dean Pompous inquired (with a somewhat thick utterance, but with great dignity of manner) whether he understood the archdeacon to say that he had actually seen this document?
"Archdeacon Jolly: He had certainly said so; it had been shown to him in Rome by Cardinal Antonelli."
Archdeacon Chasuble held the theory that the Anglican establishment is abranchof the Catholic Church, and proved that the Catholic Church was necessarily infallible at one period of her existence. The gift of infallibility wassuspendedwhen Christendom became divided, and will be recovered when the Russian, the Roman, the Greek, the Anglican, and the Oriental branches reunite—a happy period, of whose arrival, he regretted to say, there was no immediate prospect. To this Dr. Candour undertook to reply:
"When the Roman, Greek, and Anglican communities should all become one, the church would once more become infallible. Three spurious and defective Christianities fused together, if anybody could persuade them to coalesce, would make one true and perfect Christianity. The giving up what each believed specifically true, and the uniting in what each believed specifically false, was that travail in the womb of Christendom which would give birth to the new infallibility.He would only say, as the professor of theology had disposed of that point, that this was an obstetrical phenomenon which he did not think any one present would live long enough to witness.
"But he would now approach another aspect of the question, to which the archdeacon had attracted their attention. The low-church theory, he had told them, and the language of their articles and homilies, which assumed the defection of the Catholic Church, 'made void the promises of God.' Was the archdeacon quite sure that low-churchmen were the real or sole offenders? He thought not. Let him ask his friend whether even the 'diabolical millennium' of the English reformers, that dismal interval between the sixth and sixteenth centuries, was a conception more insolently subversive of the promises of God, more fatal to the Catholic idea of a divine, indefectible, and 'teaching church,' than the well-known Anglican conceit, that the early church was wholly pure, the mediaeval much less pure, and the modern quite unworthy of their obedience? Was it really so very respectful to the catholic idea, of which the archdeacon claimed to be the advocate, to assert, as he and his party did in every act of their lives, that, in spite of the 'promises of God,' the only really perfect church at this hour, protesting at once against Protestant heresies and popish corruptions, was the little group of Puseyites and ritualists within the national establishment? (Great laughter.)
"The archdeacon had reproached the low-church school, and the founders of Anglicanism, with making void the promises of God. Let the house consider how the high-church party interpreted those promises for themselves. According to their theory, the promise to be 'always' with the church applied only to the beginning and the end of her career, but not to the long interval between the two, during which the whole of Christendom was hopelessly sunk in error and corruption. It was curious to see that the high-church party cordially agreed with ultra-Protestants, that the Catholic Church during long ages had been teaching falsehoods! This was their reverence for 'the promises of God!'
"Again. The promise to guide the Church into 'alltruth' had reference only to the integrity of truthbeforethe mission of St. Augustine to England, andafterthe publication of theTracts for the Times. The twelve hundred years between them, rather a long period in the life of the church, during which all Christians obstinately believed the supremacy of the pope, the office of the mother of God, and the mystery of transubstantiation—doctrines highly offensive to Puseyites—were merely an unfortunate parenthesis in the faithfulness of God, during which the catholic idea was lamentably obscured, and God forgot his 'promises.'
"Once more. The promise that the 'gates of hell' should 'never' prevail against the church meant only, according to the same school, that the principalities of evil, doing active work under the father of lies, should certainly prevail for a good many centuries, but that finally a little sect should rise up in the Church of England, able to discriminate with precision the errors of the Anglican, the Greek, and the Roman churches, and peacefully to conduct them all to the perfect truth which they had lost, to the unity which they had forfeited, and to a very remarkable and final triumph over the 'gates of hell.'
"The only true test of a theory was the result to which it led in practice. The branch-theory did not look well on paper, but perhaps it redeemed itself in its practical evolution. He would suppose, then, that the archdeacon, resolving to try his theory, set out on a foreign tour. Did he leave Dover an Anglican, and disembark at Calais a Roman Catholic? If so, at what particular spot in the Channel did he drop the Anglican articles and take up the Roman missal? Was it marked by a buoy? or was the transformation a gradual process, like the changes of temperature? On leaving Dover, he carried with him only two sacraments, which had grown into seven by the time he landed at Calais. Supposing the distance to be twenty-five miles, did he take up a new sacrament—he was going to say at every fifth milestone but the sea knew not such measures of distance. Were there fixed points at which hebeganto believe that transubstantiation was a holy mystery, and not a 'blasphemous fable;' that confirmation and extreme unction were divine sacraments, and not, as he had believed while breakfasting at Dover, a mere 'corrupt following of the Apostles'? Did he, in spite of the injunction with which they were all familiar, 'not to speak to the man at the wheel,' anxiously interrogate that individual as to the precise longitude in which it behoved him to cast away some Anglican delusion, and take up some Catholic truth? At what point of the voyage did the pope's supremacy begin to dawn upon him? And, finally, did the process of transformation, to which all branch-Christians were inevitably subject when they went to foreign lands, depend in any degree upon the weather? Was it quicker or slower in a heavy sea? or did sea-sickness in any way affect its development?
"The prolocutor of the house here rose, with an air of dignity becoming his official character, and expressed his conviction that the general feeling of the house was that the debate should now close. (Hear, hear.) That debate had proved a variety of things, which were more or less destructive to the national church, but nothing perhaps more clearly than this, that the public was right in regarding their discussions as very unprofitable to the interests of religion, either in their own land or in any other. … If the house shared his opinion, it only remained to determine what should be the place of their future meeting. (Applause.)
"Doctor Easy was delighted to be able to offer hospitality to his reverend friends. He lived, as they knew, in the immediate neighborhood of their fine old historical abbey, and his apartments were sufficiently spacious to afford a convenient place of meeting. He proposed, therefore, on the understanding that convocation was now happily extinct, that they should meet at his residence on that day week, when they could either resume the debate that had hitherto occupied them, or turn their attention to any other topic which might promise greater profit or amusement. (Loud cries of 'Agreed.') [Excunt omnes."
The second scene is introduced with the following description, the delicate humor of which is inimitable:
"Dr. Easy's drawing-room presented an animated appearance. Friendly greetings were exchanged, and decent hilarity pervaded the assembly. The gravest countenances relaxed from conventional severity. Archdeacons smiled as if in anticipation of coming enjoyment, and even deans responded to the salutations of the inferior clergy with unwonted urbanity.The bright mirrors, well-selected pictures, and far-reaching sofas which adorned Dr. Easy's saloon, and bore witness at once to the amplitude of his revenues and the refinement of his taste, were evidently felt to be an improvement on the decorous gloom of the Jerusalem chamber. Tables of marble and rosewood were covered with choice engravings and other works of art. Portraits of the Misses Easy attracted the attention of the younger clergy. The absence of reporters imparted to their elder brethren a welcome sense of liberty. Free but not undignified postures preluded the familiar dialogue in which each could take cheerful part, without the unpleasant fear of newspaper criticism. Convocation had become a social or family reunion, and was evidently satisfied with the change. Informal discussion preceded the coming debate, and themes which never fail to interest the clerical mind occupied the company. Dean Pompous disputed with a neighbor the exact pecuniary value of a benefice likely to be shortly vacant, and suggested a probable successor to the dying incumbent. Dean Primitive conversed with Archdeacon Chasuble on the recent letter of the primate, inviting the bishops 'in visible communion with the Church of England' to a council in September. Had his friend noticed, he asked, that remarkable announcement that 'such council wouldnotbe competent to make declarations, or lay down definitions on points of doctrine'? His friend had certainly noticed it. He had heard of councils, both general and local, which had assembled todecideon points of doctrine, but it was the first time he had ever heard of a council summoned with the avowed object ofavoidingall such questions. In such cheerful talk the reverend guests continued to indulge, till their number being at length complete, there arose suddenly, amid the hum of general conversation, a loud cry of 'Chair, chair!' Then the host, leaning against a chimney-piece, bowed to his friends, and prayed them to be seated. Silence being restored, the debate commenced as follows:
"Dr. Easy rejoiced that his reverend friends had attended in such imposing numbers. In compliance with their invitation, he had selected a subject to be submitted to their notice. Their last debate, as they seemed generally to feel, had proved to themselves and to the public that authority neither did nor could reside in the English Church. It was certain that no individual clergyman, nor all the clergy put together, could decide any point of doctrine whatever; so that the day seemed close at hand if it had not actually arrived—when an Anglican would be at liberty either to accept or reject every truth contained in the Christian revelation. The learned prolocutor had well epitomized all the points of their last debate, and gracefully justified the characteristic decisions of privy council, when he said, or at least implied, that the practical result of all Anglican teaching, as of all Anglican history, might be expressed in such a formula as this, 'Christianity, from first to last, is simply a matter of opinion;' or, 'The primary object of the Christian revelation is to render it impossible for any man to know the truth with certainty.'
"In confirmation of this view of their position as members of the Established Church, he was happy to be able to call their attention to the recent declaration of one of her highest dignitaries.He regretted that he was not present with them, that he might have enforced in person the very striking statements which he was about to quote from a published volume of his sermons, with which he (Dr. Easy) had only become acquainted since their last meeting. The very Rev. Dr. Elliot, the present Dean of Bristol, had publicly asserted, without incurring the slightest shadow of reproach, these two momentous truths; (i) that the Church of England is, in all respects, a purely human institution; and (2) that her members are not bound in conscience to believe a single doctrine taught by her. But he would quote his exact words:
"'The Church of England,' said the Dean of Bristol, 'is created by the law, upheld by the law, paid by the law, and may be changed by the law,just as any other institution in the land.'
"That was his first proposition, and here was the second:
"'I cannot desire you to accept either what I affirm, or what the church affirms, as undoubtedly true, orthe only trueinterpretation of the mysteries of God.'
"It was pleasant to see the conclusions at which they had arrived in a former debate embraced with so much energy of conviction by one of the highest functionaries of their national church. And now, accepting these conclusions as indisputable, and harmonizing perfectly with the life and history of that church, he was led to ask, 'If the authority of the English Church be purely human, can her orders be divine?' This was the question he should propose for their consideration, and without another word of preface, he would submit the following motion to their vote: 'That this meeting, being unanimous on the point that authority can have no existence in the Church of England, desires to pass to the discussion of the cognate question, "Are English orders human or divine?"'"
The discussion as to the validity of these orders is pretty exhaustive, and the arguments are put with a terseness and effect quite beyond adequate praise. The hand of a master in dialectics is evident from beginning to end. Instead of attempting a summary, which would necessarily fall far short of doing justice to this part of the pamphlet, we shall let the ritualistic clergyman give the following account of himself:
"I call myself a Catholic priest, because I am either that or a ridiculous impostor, and I object to be considered in that light. I claim the power of the keys, because they belong to the priestly office, and I will not allow that the clergy of any other church have more power than I have. I can consecrate the host, though I am not quite sure what that means, because I should be only a Protestant minister if I could not, and a Protestant minister is the object of my contempt. I can absolve from sin, though the English clergy never knew they could do it, because the commission was given to somebody, and, therefore, it must have been given to me. I teach the Church of England what she ought to hold, and instruct the Church of Rome what she ought to retract, because I clearly perceive the deficiencies of the one, and detect the excesses of the other. I assert that my doctrines are part of God's truth, but I communicate with those who flatly deny them, because, when I am taunted with this, I can always reply, that it is the mark of a self-willed man to seek another communion in order to quiet his conscience.I countenance, by remaining in the Church of England, all the mortal heresies which have ever existed in her, but I tell my accusers that I only remain in her in order to remove them. I am in communion with no church in the world, but I invite them all to come into communion with me, and indicate the terms on which I will permit them to do so. I am not in schism, though I dwell in solitude, because the other Christian bodies refuse to associate with me; and I am not in heresy, though I every day communicate with heretics, because I do it only for their good. I do not obey my bishop, but I propose to him to obey me, which he foolishly declines to do. All churches have erred, but I am ready to teach them all, if they will only listen to me; and though the perfect idea of Christianity has perished from the earth, I am able to restore it at any moment, whenever I shall be requested to do so. I remain in the Church of England, though she allows most of her clergy to teach lies, because I do not choose to quit her; and I refuse to enter the Church of Rome, though she forces all her priests to teach truth, because I do not choose to obey her. I prefer to obey myself, because I find no other authority worthy to be obeyed; and, though I admit that this position has its disadvantages, I must positively decline to exchange it for any other."
The conclusion of the meeting is thus stated:
"Dr. Easy said he could not permit his friends to depart, as they now manifested their intention to do, without thanking them both for their attendance on that occasion and for the part which they had taken in a discussion of great interest and importance. He would not abuse his privilege as their host by adding to the discourse of the archdeacon more than a few brief words. They had arrived, he supposed, at a common conviction on the two great questions of authority in the Anglican Church, and the real character of her orders. It was at once their wisdom and their safety to insist that both were purely human. Any other theory, as the archdeacon had clearly proved, would expose not only themselves but their common Christianity to contempt and ruin. Either ordination, as it existed in the English Church, wasnota rite intended to produce a supernatural effect, except in a sense which might with equal justice be applied to the orders of Mr. Spurgeon or Mr. Newman Hall; or, if itwas, the Reformed and Protestant ministry established by Elizabeth and inaugurated by Parker, which had never displayed the faintest trace of any such effect, was a failure so portentous, that they must remain for ever silent in the presence of any scoffing infidel who should use it as an argument against the truth of Christianity.
"He trusted, therefore, that they were about to separate that night with this practical conclusion, that the idea of a catholic priesthood, one in doctrine and divine in endowments, existing in the English Church, was not only a contradiction of her whole history, but absolutely inconsistent with the belief that Christianity was true. Either that foolish notion must be abandoned, or they must honestly admit that, at least, the English Church was a delusion.For if any man could deliberately maintain, as a small party among them desired to do, that the entire body of the English clergy had been, from the beginning, a supernatural caste, though it was undeniable that they had always exactly resembled the laity in all their habits, principles, and actions; that they had received a special vocation from Heaven to teach the same unvarying doctrine, though no two of them could ever agree together what that doctrine was; that they possessed the faculty of retaining or remitting sin, though, for three centuries, they had never once attempted to use it, and had bitterly derided the assumption of it by the clergy of another community; that they were clothed, by the transforming grace of orders, with angelic purity and virginity, though they and their bishops had ever been even more impatient of a life of continence than any other class of human society; that they were able to call down God upon a human altar, though their own founders began their career by pulling down altars, and their own tribunals ruled that the English Church denied their existence; that the chief function of their ecclesiastical life was to offer the daily sacrifice, though the Church of England had carefully obliterated every trace of that mystery from the national mind; and, finally, that the highest spiritual privilege of their flocks was to adore the consecrated host, though their own prayer-book expressly declared it was 'idolatry to be abhorred of all faithful Christians.' If, he said, any man could seriously affirm the series of propositions here enumerated, and many more like them, he should be ready to admit, what it would no longer be possible to deny, that neither religion nor history had any real meaning, and that modern Christianity had been more fertile in childish conceits and preposterous delusions than any system of heathen mythology with which he was acquainted.
"If, on the other hand, they were content to believe with the whole nation, that the English clergy were simply the representatives of the English reformation; that they were Protestant ministers, not Catholic priests; that they were distinguished in nothing from other men, except as having undertaken to remind them, from time to time, of truths which all were too apt to forget; they would then assume the only character which really belonged to them, or in which either their own communion or any other would ever consent to recognize them. In that case, they would no longer expose either themselves or their religion to the world's contempt, nor unwittingly furnish the unbeliever with a fatal argument against the truth and the reasonableness of Christianity. The Church of England had never been the home of the supernatural, as all mankind knew from her own history; and to try to introduce so strange an element into such a receptacle would be a far more dangerous experiment than to 'pour new wine into old bottles.' They might as well attempt to inclose the lightning which could shiver rocks in the hands of an infant, as to make the English Church the shrine of mysterieswhich she had existed only to deny."
The pamphlet from which the above excerpts are made is now in press, and will soon be published by "The Catholic Publication House."
The Irish Reformation; or, The Alleged Conversion of the Irish Bishops at the accession of Queen Elizabeth, and the assumed descent of the present established hierarchy in Ireland from the ancient Irish Church, disproved.By W. Maziere Brady, D.D., Vicar of Donoghpatrick and Rector of Kilberry, Diocese of Meath, and formerly Chaplain to the Earls of Clarendon, St. Germans, and Carlisle, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, etc., etc.Fifth edition, containing also a letter from James A. Froude, M.A.; notices of the early Elizabethan Prelates, and of the sufferings of the Roman Catholic Bishops; and tables showing in juxtaposition the Anglican and Roman Catholic successions of Irish Archbishops, with lists of all Irish Roman Catholic Bishops from 1558 to the present time.London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1867.For sale by the Catholic Publication Society,126 Nassau Street, New York.
The author of this book, which has become celebrated in Great Britain, and has received the highest commendations from the English secular press, is an Irish Protestant clergyman. Catholic clergymen and scholars may, therefore, think that it is written in favor of the Irish establishment, or lacking in thorough information on Catholic topics. On the contrary, it is the most damaging attack on that iniquitous institution that has yet appeared; replete with solid learning, and an invaluable companion to the excellent works of Msgr. Moran, of Dublin, on the Irish Catholic Church and hierarchy. It is not to be supposed, however, that Dr. Brady is a Catholic in disguise, a Romanizer, or an enemy of the church whose minister he is. He is a Protestant Episcopalian, a real believer in religious liberty, and a man of liberal sentiments, who respects the Catholic Church and loves the rights and welfare of the Irish people. He has written this work not against the doctrine or discipline of the Protestant Episcopal Church, but against the falsehoods, and ignorant or fraudulent misrepresentations of historical facts, by which certain writers have attempted to justify and bolster up the absurd pretence that the Anglican establishment in Ireland is the true Catholic Church of that country. These writers, among whom Palmer is a signal instance, pretend that the Marian bishops in Ireland, as a body, accepted the pretended reformation of Elizabeth; that the Irish hierarchy, church, and nation, renounced their allegiance to the Bishop of Rome, and to the doctrine of the Roman Church; that the apostolic succession was regularly transmitted to the Protestant bishops of Ireland, and that the present Roman Catholic hierarchy and church were establishedde novo, in a schismatical manner, by emissaries of the Pope. Consequently, they say, the Protestant archbishops of Armagh and Dublin are the canonical successors of St. Patrick and St. Lawrence; the other Protestant bishops are also the canonical successors to the ancient Catholic bishops of the sees they pretend to fill, the ecclesiastical property legally belongs to the Protestant establishment, and the Roman Catholic bishops are intruders who have drawn the majority of the Irish people into a schism. It was enough to have forced Protestantism into domination in Ireland by force, rapine, slaughter, and persecution without a parallel; to have robbed the Irish church and the Irish people of everything they possessed, without adding insult to injury by this preposterous pretence. Dr. Brady has laboriously and triumphantly refuted it, and Mr. Froude, the English historian, has given his full indorsement to Dr. Brady's statements. Dr. Brady proves that, at the most, two of the Marian bishops submitted to Elizabeth Curwin, of Dublin, and O'Fihil, of Leighlin. Curwin's apostasy is a notorious fact, but that of O'Fihil is denied by Dr. Moran, who adduces evidence against it.Curwin was an Englishman, and consecrated by English bishops. Therefore, according to Dr. Brady, but one Irishman, having Irish consecration, deserted the communion of the Pope for that of the Queen and Parker. He goes through all the Irish seesseriatim, proving the continuity of succession from their ancient to their modern Catholic incumbents, and proving, also, the forcible intrusion of Protestants by degrees, and with many breaks, into the same titular sees. He states the conclusion derived from his facts and arguments thus: "In point of fact, the Irish nation from 1558 to 1867 has continued in communion with Rome, never having ceased to be, in its clergy, priests, and people, as thoroughly Roman Catholic as at the accession of Elizabeth," (p. 199.) The claim of a succession of orders by a line traceable to the old Irish hierarchy is also disposed of. The doctor shows that whatever orders the Irish Protestant church has are derived from Curwin, and from him alone, through Loftus, who was consecrated by him to Armagh, and thence transferred to Dublin, in lieu of Curwin himself, who was transferred to Oxford. Of course he does not deny the validity of the orders, but merely the fact that they descend from an Irish source. These orders cannot, however, be recognized by the Catholic Church for two reasons. First, there is a probability that Loftus was never ordained priest, and, consequently, was incapable of receiving Episcopal consecration. Second, he was consecrated by K. Edward's Ordinal, which is an invalid form. Anglicans may solace themselves as much as they please by the reflection that they can trace the Irish ordinations up to Curwin, an undoubted bishop, and may cover up the two great flaws we have pointed out in their validity, by the special pleading they are such adepts in using. This will not, however, benefit in any way those who are obliged to trace their orders to Parker, nor will it affect the position of either English or Irish Protestant clergymen in relation to the Catholic Church, or even to the schismatics of the East.
Dr. Brady throws much light on some other topics of historical interest. He shows, among other things, how bad was the character of Curwin, Loftus, and several others of the first Protestant bishops of Ireland, and, on the other hand, does justice to the virtues and martyr-like constancy of the Catholic prelates. He proves, against the denials of some Protestant writers, the truth of the history of the cruel martyrdom of that great hero of the faith, Archbishop O'Hurley, a man who richly deserves, in common with many other Irish martyrs, to be canonized.
The lists of Catholic bishops add much to the value of the work, and so also does the refutation of many Protestant calumnies against the Irish people, and the exposure of several falsifications of history.
On Catholic principles, the established church of Ireland is nothing but a schismatical sect, whose bishops are intruders upon the domain of the lawful bishops of the country. Even had they valid ordination, they could make no claim to a lawful succession in jurisdiction.
On Protestant principles, it is not in any way entitled to be considered as the national church of Ireland, but only as the church of a small minority of the people, whose ancestors forcibly intruded themselves upon the Irish soil by the aid of fire, and sword, and confiscation. We have no hostility against the Episcopalians of Ireland, who are not accountable for the crimes of their ancestors, and many of whom are worthy persons and true Irish patriots. We would not have them molested in their religious liberty, or even deprived of the churches in their possession, provided they can make any use of them, although it is so painful to Catholic feeling to see these ancient sacred shrines of the faith in their hands. But we would have them deprived of the privileges of a state establishment, Catholic and Protestant dissenters freed from the obligation of paying tithes to their clergy, and themselves left to sustain their own religion by their own contributions. The Irish establishment is a crying iniquity, and it ought to be suppressed. It is time, also, that the glorious history of the Catholic Church in Ireland, since the disastrous epoch of Henry VIII., should be better known than it is.We thank Dr. Brady for his valuable contribution to truth and the cause of justice, and we recommend his work, as the production of a Protestant Episcopal clergyman of learning, honesty, and candor, to all who are interested in the history of Ireland, and especially to his own brethren in the ministry in this country.