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I

MH. MURRAY'S LIST OF WORKS LATELY PUBLISHED.

THE BISHOP OF EXETER'S LETTER to the Arch-

BISHOP OF Canterbury. Seventeenth Edition. Svo., 3s. 6d.

GORHAM V. BISHOP OF EXETER. The Speech of Ed- ward Badei.ey, Esq., before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. With a Preface on the Judgment. 8vo., 5s.

THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER. With 1000 Ornamental

Borders, Initials, Vignettes, &c. New and smaller Edition, Svo. 2 Is. cloth. Sis. Gd. calf. 42s. morocco.

ADDRESSES AND CHARGES. By Edward Stanley,

D. D., late Bishop of Norwich. Preceded by a Memoir of his Life. By the Rev. Arthur Penryhn Stanley, M.A. Svo. (^ In preparation.)

PARISH SERMONS; on the Lessons, the Gospel, or tlie

Epistle, for every Sunday in the Year. By tBishop IIeber. Sirth Edition. 2 vols, post 8vo., 16s.

SERMONS ON THE LEADING DOCTRINES AND DUTIES TAUGHT BY THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

Preached in Cathedral Churches. By the Very Rev. Dean Peixew. 2 vols. Svo., 21s.

I

HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY, from the Birth of Christ to

the Extinction of Paganism in the Roman Empire. By the Very Rev. Dean Milmak. 3 vols. Svo., 36s.

SUGGESTIONS TO THE STUDENT UNDER PRESENT

THEOLOGICAL DIFFICULTIES. By the Very Rev. Dean Tait. Post Svo., Gs. 6d.

ON THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. By Archdeacon

Manning. Second Edition. 8vo., 10s. 6d.

ON THE DOCTRINE OF THE INCARNATION OF OUR

LORD JESUS CHRIST, in its Relation to INIankind and to the Church. By Arclideacun Wii.berforc p. Third Edition. 8vo., 12s.

WHY SHOULD THE BISHOPS CONTINUE TO SIT IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS ?

WHY SHOULD THE BISHOPS

CONTINUE TO SIT

HOUSE OF LORDS?

GEORGE ANTHONY DENISON, M.A.,

VICAR OF EAST bRENT.

2tf)irti Ittiitton.

LONDON: JOSEPH MASTERS ALDEHSGATE STREET,

AND NEW BOND STREET.

lonbon:

printkd bv joseph masters,

ai.uersgate street.

WHY SHOULD THE BISHOPS CONTINUE TO SIT IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS ?

I WISH to state in the outset the principle upon which, after long deliberation, I have decided to publish the following pages.

I believe it to be a sin to. desert the communion of the Church of England.

I believe it to be hardly less a sin to abide in the communion of the Church of England, and not to labour earnestly, syste- matically, vigorously, steadily, for the removal of those causes, which make the message with which she is charged from God to be little realized even by great numbers of her clergy, and therefore to be little understood, welcomed, and appreciated by large masses of her people. I can as little understand an acquiescence in the wrongs, or a connivance at the unrealities of the Church of England, as I can understand an acceptance of the corruptions of the Church of Rome, the wanderings of Dissent, or the negations of the State.

I believe that to be inert and indifferent now, not to affirm and maintain and realize for ourselves and for others, as best we may, the essence of the Church of England as a living branch of the Church Catholic, is, more than ever, to be parties to a surrender of her heritage, and to betray souls to Rome or to Dissent, or, what is even far worse and full of consequences more deadly, to the indifferentism of the State.

For the State is labouring to establish amongst us, in the place of the Catholic Faith, what is after all, when stripped of the disguises of a spurious charity, only a form of natural reli- gion, because the State has persuaded itself that this is what is most applicable to the circumstances of a divided people. The

B

eternal verities of tlic Catholic Faith are subordinated to, and their value is tested by, political and social considerations.

It may be that the English nation has so dealt with the Chuucii of Christ that these things cannot now be otherwise than they are. It may be that the return of the people, as a people, to the fold of the Church is no longer possible.

If it be so, here is a most awful warning that we " hold fast that we have," and " strengthen the things that are ready to die." But if the return be still possible, here is a most glorious encouragement to each and all of us to be " faithful unto death."

In a time of almost unexampled peril, unexampled because THE TEMPTATION of the time is a new ten\ptation, powerful in its subtlety, as well as in its strength, plausible and insidious in no common measure — for men are told now for the tirst time in the history of the Church of Christ, and told by authority, ecclesiastical and civil, that they need not concern themselves for the Faith of the Church, because their own individual acceptance and teaching of what that Faith is, is uncontrolled — in a time when authority is thus ministering to, instead of regulating, man's pride of reason, and the disposition of "the natural man" to exercise an individual and independent judgment even in respect of the Catholic Faith, the corporate voice of the Church is silenced by an abuse of power.

It is one of the warnings of the time that, even under cir- cumstances like these, men sound in the Faith are found not simply to stand aloof from, but to complain of, that irregular action which has been resorted to under the pressure of an over- ^

whelming necessity. It is said, and said truly, that the vocation of the Clergy is in their parishes, and that they are to look to the corporate voice of the Church for the defence of the Faith, and for those measures which concern the Church's general wel- fare. But the Church of England has no corporate voice. It is State policy to prevent the expression of the mind of the Church, because State usurpation could not co-exist together with it.

Are Churchmen then to look to the Bishops ? Alas ! alas ! who shall be found to say that, as matter of fact, the Bishops of the Church of England do defend the Faith, or that they provide and secure measures for her general welfare ?

The question which forms the title of these pages is one which^"^"'%

is beinf^- asked upon all sides unreservedly by very many who a few years ago would have shrunk from the expression of it and even from the thought.

It is a question which has lung been asked by many who have persuaded themselves that it is for the good of Christ's religion that THE Church of England should be made weak and brough low.

It is a question which is asked now by many who have no desire nearer to their heart than that the Church of England should be made strong; " a city set on a hill^' to be "the light of the world." These have no thought of deserting her com- munion and of seeking " rest " in Rome. They believe, and they trust to die in the belief, that the Church of England has given her of God all that makes the essence of a Chuich ; they believe that she has a great mission to fulfil in these islands and throughout the world ; they confess, sorrowfully, and with pangs of self-reproach, that she is not fulfilling it.

They see that some have deserted her communion because they have persuaded themselves that the essence of the Church cannot be found in the Church of England, mistaking it would seem, the accidents, for the essence, of the Church; they are pressed in spirit to use every exertion to prevent the further growth of so unhappy a delusion. They cannot rest under the heavy burden of their convictions that there is much in the pre- sent position and circumstances and prospects of the Church of England very favourable to its growth ; they cannot rest under the heavy burden of their fears that, hitherto, the dangers, the necessities, the opportunities, the means of improvement, the dis- eases and the remedies — in one word, the trial of the Church of England is little realized by her own children.

They fear for the Church, they fear for themselves, lest they should be found wanting; they dare not conceal or dissemble what presses upon their souls day and night ; the time is gone by when Churchmen can afibrd to keep silence touching those many bars and hindrances to the vigorous and healthful action of the Church which cross her ])ath at every step ; some of them cast in from without by the hands of her avowed enemies, others and those far the worst, interposed from within by false or timid friends, or again by those of whom it is hard to say whe-

B 2

tlicr they be iViciuls or foes, who cannot or will not, distingnish between the essence — the Church — and the accident — the Esta- blishment.

First on the list ol" such hindrances I'rom within appear to be the seats of the Bishops in the House of Lords.

Wherefore, with many others, I ask the question, Why should the Bishops continue to sit in the House of Lords ?

My object is, if possible, to elicit the formal discussion of this question : it will be something to have procured an argumenta- tive statement of what is to be said in favour of the position of the Bishops as Peers of Parliament ; of the advantages derived, or supposed to be derived, of the duties fulfilled, or supposed to be fultilled, by the ])rescnce of the Bishops in the House of Lords. My business is to set down the disadvantages accruing and the duties interfered with thereby ; for myself, I confess that after the best consideration I have been able to give, T can- not discover the good which counterbalances the evil, or even tends to diminish its heavy weight.

I am well aware of the obloquy I must incur, but I do not hesitate to declare that the position of the Bishops, as Peers of Parliament, appears to me to be, in these days, incapable of de- fence ; and since it is too obvious to require formal proof, that, as one of the primary accidents of the Church of England, that position cannot have only a negative character, it will follow, that, if it cannot be defended, it must be not simply, negatively useless, but positively injurious both to Church and State.

This then is the conclusion which I propose to establish. The main propositions to be proved are in brief :

L That the Church of England, as a Church, has only a limited hold upon her members, whether clergy or peojile.

IL That her principal hold upon her members depends partly upon a false view of her office and essential character, and partly uj)on her accidents.

in. That the position of the clergy being, in many respects, secular and unreal, is one principal hindrance to the more just and extended ajjpreciation of the office and essential character of the Church.

IV. That in particular, the position of the Bishops as Peers of Parliament is secular and unreal.

If these propositions can be established, as I believe they may be without much difficulty, it will at least follow that a strong argument will have been adduced why the Bishops of the Church of England should not continue to sit in the House of Lords ; an argument which, if it be valid, no considerations can suffice to set aside or countervail, because the Church's weakness is our principal evil, the Church's strength and efficiency our greatest good.

It is not meant that the mere fact of the Bishops ceasing to be Peers of Parliament will avail to convert the position of tlie Church of England from one of weakness into one of strength, but that that position cannot, humanly speaking, be made to be a strong position so long as the Bishops continue to be Peers of Parliament.

Proposition 1.

That the Church of England as a Church has only a limited hold upon her members, whether clergy or people.

Such a confession is, it will be said, humiliating and dangerous. I allow that it is humiliating ; the danger I believe to lie not in the making, but in the withholding it.

The Church of England has a hold upon members of her communion, but not as a Church ; not, that is, as being in these islands, the Body which, according to Christ's ordinance, has committed unto it,

I. The Apostolical succession of the ministry ;

II. The Holy Sacraments;

The clergy having divine authority to '' minister the doctrine and Sacraments and the discipline of Christ;" the laity having the privilege of being brought, together with their clergy, into Christ's true fold, and of being preserved within it continually.

For the Apostolical succession of the ministry and the Holy Sacraments are the great gifts of God to His Church ; they are the essence of a Church ; all other things are only the accidents of a Church. But it is not as possessing these gifts that the Church of England has any extended hold upon members of her communion.

Her hold upon then) has its source and its strength, such as this is and long has been, in things of a very different stamp and value from the stamp and value of these great gifts of God.

6

I. It is as the supposed authorized depositary ol' what is called " the right of private judgment," which has usuri)ed the place of the true deposit committed to the Reformed Church of England — the protest against Romish corruptions and Puritan innovations — it is in virtue of this, her supposed character, that the Church of England has her principal religious hold upon the members of her communion ; and so it happens that those arc often loudest in professing their attachment to her — to her doc- trine and her discipline — who deny the Apostolical succession and degrade the Sacraments.

II. It is as " the Establishment."

1. As possessing a "great stake" in the country, and as having rights interwoven in sundry ways, convenient and incon- venient, with the general rights of property,

2. As supplying in her holy orders a position of respectability and influence.

3. As supplying in every parish at least one person who is bound to see to the externals of religious worship, the education of the young, and the necessities of the poor.

4. As having many historical and constitutional I'ecollections, however vague and ill defined and inconsistent with existing facts, and as identified with feelings of national pride and inde- pendence.

It is in virtue principally of these things that the Church of England in the XlXth century has her hold upon the members of her communion.

Now no one of these things sepai'ately, or all of them put together, however good some of them may be in themselves, are any part of the essence of the Church ; they might, each and all of them, disappear to-morrow, and the Church would remain just the same, with the Apostolical succession of the ministry and with the Holy Sacraments ; with her clergy and with her people ; with all those, that is, who would be found faithful to her when all worldly inducements to belong to her communion had been done away.

I fancy I hear the sneering laugh of the adversary implying that in that case the clergy and the people of the Church of England would be few. It uiight be so. I trust I shall not utiend in saying, that if the trial were to come iwiv it might not

improbably be so ; tliat if we were at this time thrown nakedly upon our faith in the Apostohcal succession of the ministry and in the Holy Sacraments, we might not improbably be found to be few; my own argument goes to this very point. It is just because it seems that God^s mercy is giving us a breathing time wherein to prepare and discipline ourselves, that so, if it be God's will that we must make our choice between the essence and the accidents of the Church, neither clergy nor people may be few, it is just because of this that it becomes us to labour to know all our weakness, its causes and its remedies ; and I will add that, whether so extreme a trial is about presently to come upon us or no, such knowledge must be had, ay, and it must be acted upon, and that without loss of time. The Church of England is weak through her clergy and her people ; AS A Church she has only a. limited hold either upon clergy or people ; wherefore she does not, and so long as this is so, she cannot, discharge her office according to God's ordinance, and yet, if she do not discharge her office, what shall be the end ? She is pressed by Rome ; she is pressed by Dissent ; to neither one nor the other does she offer any steady and consistent oppo- sition ; neither in the presence of one or of the other does she bear herself as a Church ; for Rome she has hard names — for Dissent she has compromises. Hard names will not beat back the Church of Rome, neither will persecution, nor " vexation ;" nothing can avail to do this but the superior holiness of the Church of England, superior diligence, earnestness, self-denial, grasp and realisation of the Truth, and readiness to sacrifice all for the Truth's sake. Compromise is not charity ; conciliation at the expense of the Truth is not charity ; joint action, which only becomes possible by the surrender of eternal principles, is not charity.

She is pressed by the indifferentism — the natural religion — of the State, by latitudinarianism, and by infidelity in all their phases.

She is threatened by the advocates of what is called " the Church of the future;" touching which nothing is certainly known, except that it bears no resemblance to " the Church of the past."

She is pressed by the millions of her own people calling upon her for the bread of life.

This is her case from without, and fVoiii within. Alas, how feeble and inconsistent is the resistance she is offering to the assaults of the adversary ! how tardy and insufficient is the answer she is making to the cry of her own people !

The Church of England appears scarcely to appreciate and to realize the fact, that her position within the four seas is still as completely and emphatically a missionary position as is to be found in the world. For, to put aside for a moment, the start- ling truth, that there are large masses of formal heathenism in the midst of her, how much is there to be done to evangelize our nominal Christianity. Now to labour unceasingly for this, is surely as plainly the inissiun of the Church as to preach to the heathen soul that " there is none other name under heaven given unto men, in whom and through whom we may receive health and salvation, but only the name of our Lord Jesus Chkist.^^

Men will doubtless differ as to the degree in which these several things are true ; but if any one denies the main facts as above stated, with that man I have no argument.

I proceed to prove what I have asserted.

1st. That AS A Churcu, the Church of England has only a limited hold upon her clergy and her people.

2nd. That her principal hold upon them depends partly upon a false view of her office and essential character, and partly upon her accidents.

If the first of these propositions can be established, the second will, I suppose, be not disputed. The argument is ex- haustive, and of the nature of a ddcmma. It is a fact, that the Church of England has a hold upon her clergy and upon her people. Now this hold must be had either as a Church, or NOT as a Church, but as something less than a Church, or even oj)posed to the idea of " a Church," i.e. as an imperfect form of Christianity, and as a national institution for the maintenance of religion. If then I can show that as a Church — i.e. as the Body which in these islands has com- mitted unto it the Apostolical Succession of the ministry and the Holy Sacraments — her hold is very limited, it will follow that that hold exists mainly in virtue of some supposed cha- racter which is less than the character of a Church, or

eveu opposed to tlic idea of a Church, and iu virtue of " the Estabhshment."

Now it is obvious to remark in the outset, the close con- nexion which has ever subsisted between the doctrine of the Apostolical Succession of the ministry and the doctrine of the Sacraments. It was to be expected that this would be so, seeing that these two gifts make up the essence of the Church, and all evidence proves it to be so as matter of fact. For fifteen centuries, the doctrine of the Apostolical Succession of the ministry was, so to speak, unquestioned ; that is, those who professed the religion of Christ throughout the world, " taught no other doctrine.'^ The corruptions and abuses of the Church of Rome, forced upon a large portion of the Western Church the necessity of refusing to defer any longer to the authority of the Pope in matters of faith, and the XVIth century is the era of the Reformation.

The price paid for the Reformation has been a heavy one, eveu in England. I am not saying that it has been too heavy : no price could have been too heavy to pay for a return to the doctrine and discipline of the Church primitive. And this is what was intended to be secured, and what was judged to have been secured, and what was secured, so far as it could be by the letter and the spirit of formularies, in the Reformed Church of England ; but elsewhere it was not secured, and the action of those bodies of Christians who, like the Church of England, threw off the yoke of Rome, but who did not, like the Church of England, preserve so much of the doctrine and the order of the Church of Rome, as was agreeable to the doctrine and the order of the Church primitive, has been in many cases fatal to themselves, and has, throughout, been very disastrous to us. Their rejection of the doctrine of the Apostolical Succession has made them to be no " Churches :" it has issued, in not a few instances, in Socinianism : it has been attended, as it began, with all manner of heresies touching the Holy Sacra- ments; and in both these respects, the contagion has spread beyond themselves, and has very widely and deeply infected the Church of England. The link of the Reformation has- been stronger than the link of the " one Faith." There have been other co-operating causes in the national character and institu- tions of the English people, and in the close connexion between

10

Church and State ; and so it is that the Church of England })resents at this day the astounding spectacle of a Church claim- ing to exercise, in virtue of her Apostolical character, a godly discipline, and yet incapable of exercising it in any efficient measure ; holding definitely and distinctly the whole Truth, and no more than the whole Truth, and yet wearing many aspects in- compatible, not with the Truth itself but, with the realization of the Truth. She claims to hold, and she does hold, the doc- trine of the Apostolical Succession of the ministry, and the doctrine of the Holy Sacraments; but it is rather as abstrac- tions than as living realities that either one or the other is maintained and enforced in the practice of the Church of England.

This is the price which has been paid for our Reformation : a heavy price, but not too heavy, because it can be redeemed, if God icill.

After the lapse of three centuries, and under circumstances of extreme peril, the mischief is displaying itself in an aggra- vated shape, — in that shape which I have endeavoured to express in the proposition, that as a Church, i.e. as the Body, to which in these islands is committed the Apostolical Succes- sion of the ministry and the Holy Sacraments, the Church of England has only a limited hold upon the members of her Communion.

Now, whatever might have been urged against this proposition a few years ago, it seems impossible, after the experience of the last five years, to maintain the negative of it. If it had been only that the first Minister of the Crown had set up a claim to control absolutely the appointment to bishoprics, this of itself would have sufficed to suggest and prove, that in a coun- try where such a claim could be so much as made at all, the relations of the State to the Church, ay, and more than this, the relations of the members of the Church to the Church, must be of a very curious and anomalous description. Biit when the claim is not only made, but fails to elicit any strong oppo- sition, or even remonstrance, and proceeds to establish itself, if not legally, yet absolutely, then the conclusion is irresistible, that neither clergy nor people realize the principles involved in the appointment of their Bishops.

It is true, that no usurpation of the Church's rights u\ the

11

appointment of her Bishops invahdates "the Succession." But we are not concerned with mere vaUdity ; our question is, whether clergy and laity realize the doctrine of the Succession, whether, i.e. they deal with it as matter of faith, and not as an abstraction. Now if members of the Church of England be- lieved as matter of faith that their Bishops are the successors of the Apostles, and, as such, administrators of the Apostolic office, they could not stand by and witness with apathetic in- difference, any act, or series of acts, tending directly and power- fully to the disparagement of that belief, and to the investing it with an unreal character. But it is surely impossible to predicate any such proposition, either of the clergy, or the laity, of a Church which acquiesced, and in great part more than acquiesced, in the claim advanced in 1847 by the Prime Minister of the Crown, and gave little countenance and but feeble and scanty support to those who stood forward at that time to defend the Faith.

Again, it is involved in the doctrine of the Apostolical Suc- cession, that the Bishops of a Church in synod assembled, are the judges of doctrine; the sole judges of the character, and ex- tent, and effect of statements of doctrine put forth by clergy or people, whether i.e. these be such as to disqualify the one from the cure of souls, or to debar the other from the j)rivileges of Communion. Now it is impossible but that occasions for the exercise of this function of the Episcopate must arise frequently. But in England, the civil power not only interposes to prevent its exercise, but proceeds to substitute a tribunal of its own in the place of God's ordinance : under the plea of guarding " civil rights " — which term, by a cui'ious confusion of thought, is taken to be synonymous, in the case of the clergy, with " the temporalities of a benefice " — the civil power sets aside alto- gether the judgment of the spiritualty in matters of doctrine.

But it is not only with the judicial function of the synod of the Church, but also with its deliberative function, that the civil power interferes in such sort as to prohibit the exercise of either one or the other ; so that the Church, which, in virtue of the Apostolical Succession of her ministry, has an inherent and in- alienable right to the free use of her synodical power, is debarred from all such use, to the great injury both of her doctrine and

12

her discipline, and to the manifest depreciation of her whole character as a living branch of the Church Catholic.

Now it is here again, as in the case of the appointment of the Bishops ; the simple fact of the existence of the prohibition is sufficient to show that the relations of the State of England to the Church of England, as also the relations of the members of the Church to the Church, are of a very curious and anomalous description. But when we take into account the additional fact, that such prohibition fails to elicit any strong and united expression of remonstrance, and to stimulate to any systematic and steady exertion for the recovery of powers, without the free use of which the Church cannot discharge her office, the con- clusion is, as in the other case, irresistible, that neither clergy nor people realise the necessity of restoring the synodical action of the Church.

Now belief in the necessity of such synodical action cannot be separated from belief in the doctrine of the Apostolical succession ; wherefore it follows again that the members of the Church of England do not realise the doctrine of the Apostolical succession.

I might appeal to the individual consciousness and to the in- dividual experience of the members of the Church in corrobora- tion of this conclusion, and I might put many questions which it would be hard to answer, except so as to prove its substantial truth. I cannot however think that it is necessary, and I willingly forbear. But, to pass by all evidence of a private character, how strangely and with what deep and solemn warning does the evidence of public events accumulate.

Close upon the proof of my proposition supplied by the at- tempt to lower the episcopal office into a mere function of the State, by the resistance to the claim for a revival of the synodical powers of the Church, and by the manner in which members of the Church have received and submitted to both the assault and the refusal, follows the history of the " Papal aggression,'' and of the bearing of the Church of England under a new trial.

Now the act of the Popedom has been aimed directly and dis- tinctly at the Apostolical succession of the Church of England. It is upon the denial of the fact of her succession that the Roman Catholic hierarchy is established. It is true that that is no new denial. Rome never changes, except by way of developement,

13

and slic is asserting now nothing but what she has asserted always. But still the establishment of the Roman Catholic Bishops throughout England has brought her claim home to our doors in a very startling shape. There is a practical character about the assault which might have been expected to make an impression upon the English mind ; and it has made an impi-ession ; but of what kind ? Is there anything in it, so to speak, corresponding to the real character of the assault ? I say there is not. There may have been here and there something of the kind, but it has been overwhelmed and lost in a mass of declamation, for it is absurd to call it reasoning, of a very different character : Church and State, popular Protestantism, right of private judgment, indepen- dence of the nation, dignity of the Crown, supremacy of the Crown, insolence of the Pope, arrogance of the Cardinal, effron- tery of the Roman Catholic Bishops, ingratitude of the Roman Catholics : these are the materials out of which the declamation has been framed which has made an impression upon the English mind ; and as Bishops and clergy, to say nothing of all classes of Dissent, have dealt very largely and indiscriminately in the article manufactured out of these materials, it cannot justly be matter of surprise that the laity should have done so too.

But granting for a moment that all these things are true, what has any one of them separately, or all of them put together, to do with the real matter in dispute between the Churches ? They have nothing to do with it. Some of them indeed have no existence in reference to the matter in dispute. What, e.g., has the supre- macy of the Crown in causes ecclesiastical to do with Roman Catholics, who deny and repudiate that supremacy, even in the qualified sense in which the Church of England admits it? in what way has the dignity of the Crown or the independence of the nation been touched or compromised ? The charge, when taken in connection with the facts of the case, is simply ridiculous. Rome has made no assault upon the dignity of the Crown of England or upon the independence of the nation, but she has made a direct home assault upon the essence of the Church of England, upon the succession of her ministry, and therefore upon her power of administering the Sacraments.

Who has met that assault ? Has our Episcopate, have our Bishops in their several dioceses, have our clergy, have our peo-

14

pie ? I say nothing of Parliament ; Parliament has disqualified itself from maintaining or defending the Church of England as A CiiUKCH, and it would be well, for the credit of Parliament, if it were possible to expunge from its records, and from the memory of mankind, the evidence of the mass of contradictions and unrealities into which the unexampled recklessness of a prime minister, and his eager desire to seize hold of every opportunity for breaking down the Catholicity of the Church of England, have betrayed both Houses of Parliament. Some laws become obsolete from lapse of time and change of cir- cumstances ; it has been reserved for Lord John Russell to be responsible for the passing of a law, which it has cost a session and all the little power he once possessed of govern- ing the country to make, and which is obsolete from the first moment that it becomes law. His other achievement in this matter is this : that while he has not succeeded in breaking down the Catholicity of the Church of England, a thing which re- quires other strength and other hands, and which can only be done finally and efi"ectually //'om ivithin, he has dealt her another heavy blow and great discouragement by tempting her to place her defence upon a false issue, and to lose sight of her true position as a Church of Christ in the contemplation of her accidental position as the national Establishment. Of all ways of crippling and weakening the Church of England and of exposing and per- petuating her weakness, I know of no one so certain and so effectual as the way of defending her by act of Parliament.

How will it redeem the answer which must be given to the questions I have asked above, to point to some scattered examples in which it has been shown that the essential character of the struggle between the Churches has been realized ? The great fact remains, that the clergy and people of the Church of Eng- land have presented to the world the astounding spectacle of a branch of the Church Catholic attempting to defend itself against the schismatical assault of another branch by arguments drawn almost exclusively from the secular accidents of their Church, and not satisfied with this, have not hesitated very generally to unite with, or at least to welcome the co-operation of those who deny the essence of the Church of England as absolutely as Rome denies it — though the denial proceeds upon other as-

15

sumptions than those of Rome — nay of many who reject the great eternal verities which the Church of Rome holds in common with the Church of England.

It is hard to conceive any course more inconsistent with the position of members of a branch of the Church Catholic, or more injurious to the truth of that position, as stamping upon it a secular and unreal character.

Once more then I say, that the conclusion is irresistible, that as a general fact, neither the clergy nor the people of the Church of England realize the doctrine of the Apostolical succession. It presents itself as an abstraction, it is not matter of faith. To defend it at all even here and there by a stray resolution or declaration is an uncommon act — something which exposes the defender to the imputation of singularity, and what is called in the jargon of the day " extreme opinions." To sacrifice any- thing in its defence is not, it would seem, expected amongst us, of any member of the Church of England.

Alas for the condition to which we are come ; alas that we should live and die in the delusion that doctrines, which are no realities, are doctrines still.

I pass on to the consideration of our case in respect of the other part of the essence of the Church — the Holy Sacra- ments.

I understand the doctrine of the Sacraments to be this.

I. That man is " made a member of Christ, the child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven," in and by holy Baptism.

II. That man " made a member of Christ, the child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven," in and by Holy Baptism, is renewed from time to time in Holy Communion.

III. That "a death unto sin, and a new birth unto right- eousness" is given to every adult and every infant in and by the outward visible sign or form in Baptism, " water, in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."

IV. That the gift may be received, in the case of adults, worthily or unworthilj^, but that it is always received.

V. That the Body and Blood of Christ arc given to every one who receives the Sacramental Bread and Wine.

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VI. That the gift may be rkceived worthily or unworthily, but that it is always received.

I say THE doctrine of the Sacraments, because that doc- trine is one. It is not uncommon, in the vagueness of our theology, to hear it spoken or treated of as twofold, and even separable. But surely what is true of holy Baptism, and what is true of holy Communion, arc but partsof the same doctrine. Man born into the world a member of the old creation, is born again a member of the new creation — " born of water and of the Spirit" — in and by holy Baptism: and the principle of the life in Christ thus imparted to man in and by holy Baptism, is renewed and carried on unto such perfection as is attainable in this life, in and by holy Communion. There is nothing twofold, much less separable, here.

Now if the doctrine be one, it will follow that the acceptance of it must be one — truth of belief is not divisible. Wherefore to make it correct to say of any one that he holds the doctrine OF the Sacraments, it must appear that he is of sound belief alike in respect of holy Baptism and holy Communion ; i.e. that he holds alike Regeneration in holy Baptism, and the real presence in holy Communion. And fui'ther, that there is no room for a sound belief in Regeneration in holy Baptism without a sound belief in the real presence in holy Com- munion, and vice versa.

In like manner, any flaw in our belief respecting Regenera- tion in holy Baptism is fatal to our claim to hold that belief in reality. Now such a flaw is the drawing any distinction in respect of the Sacrament, between adult and infant Baptism, as if there could be two Baptisms and not one. I say, "in respect of the Sacrament," because the Sacrament, and man's accep- tance of the Sacrament, arc different things; an infant cannot accept holy Baptism unworthily, an adult may ; but what God has seen fit to bestow in and by the outward sign, it is impos- sible for any man to say he has not received when that outward sign has passed upon him ; and in like manner of holy Com- munion ; a man who receives the Sacramental Bread and Wine receives the Body and Blood of Christ; worthily it may be, unworthily it may be ; but it is impossible, under any circum- stances, ibr him to say that he has not received it ; and what he

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receives worthily or unworthily is in all cases the same thing ; in all cases "the inward part or thing signitied," "the Body and Blood of Christ." If it were not so, then in the case of one receiving unworthily there would be no Sacrament.

This, however, is not the place for going in detail into the theological proof of what I have here advanced. Tf the state- ment of the Doctrine of the Sacraments I have here made is controverted, I shall be prepared to argue the case, but at present it is not necessary.

The point with which I am immediately concerned, is whether the Church of England has any but a limited hold either upon her clergy or her people in respect of the second part of the essence of the Church, the Holy Sacraments.

The proof of the negative of this question is not far to seek.

Some two years ago, a Priest of the Church of England was presented by the Lord Chancellor to a benefice with cure of souls, in the diocese of Exeter.

The Priest so presented, maintained and published a doctrine in respect of Holy Baptism, which has nothing in common with the Doctrine of the Sacraments.

The Bishop of Exeter refused to institute ; his refusal was confirmed, upon appeal, by the decision of the Court of Arches ; but the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council reversed that decision, and sanctioned the heresy.

The two Archbishops approved of the reversal, and the Priest came into possession of the benefice with cure of souls.

Now what has the Church of England done, out of the Diocese of Exeter, cither by her clergy or her people, to clear herself from the charge of being committed to an approval of hei-esy ? What has the Church of England done, cither by her clergy or by her people, to show that she does not hold what Mr. Gorham holds ?

Alas, she has done what, when compared with her means of resistance, her Episcopate, her numbers of clergy and laity, and above all, with the magnitude of the trust committed unto her, becomes so minute and insignificant, that it can hardly be de- tected by the most microscopic eye.

The Archbishops being approvers of the heresy, help from that

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