LORD SALISBURY ON THE CHURCH.
IT is refreshing at a Church Congress to get anything so distinct, strong, and sound in its meaning as Lord Salisbury's speech on the Church's comprehensiveness. He maintains that all our formularies will remain, and will never be altered, because nobody agrees as to the direction in which to alter them ; that all sorts of views of them will always be taken, varying from the extreme view on the Rationalistic or Evangelical side, to the extreme view on the Ritualistic side ; and that the worst thing that can happen to the Church is for those who are pro- foundly repelled by any such extreme view to appeal to the Ecclesiastical Courts to expel those who bold it from the Church. The mischief of this course is that it compels all the men of intermediate views to take a side, to express their wish for the success either of one party or of the other, and so divides even those who are not personally interested in the decision into more sharply conflicting schools. The persecuted religious teacher, if he be a perfectly unworldly man, will be hardly affected at all by his condemnation, even if he be condemned, and certainly will not think worse of his own opinions for having incurred the condemnation. If he be a somewhat worldly man, he knows that it will answer to him very well to have been condemned and ejected from the Church ; he will exchange "that minute income which the English language euphemistically calls a living" for a popu- larity which even in pounds, shillings and pence is worth a great deal more to him. Thus, while totally useless,— rather worse than useless,—as a preventive measure, ecclesias- tical litigation, instead of rendering the Church more uniform in doctrine, tends to divide it into more sharply distinguished schools than ever, and to cast a vast halo of popularity round the few whom the law does find guilty of transgressing the formularies of the Church. What Lord Salisbnry advises, then, is that those who are horror-struck at any extreme of doctrine should, instead of trying to prove the offender to be a transgressor of the law,—which is extremely likely to end in getting a judgment that he has just not transgressed the law,—suppress their indignation, go to another Church if they can, and at all events, not attempt to settle the matter by litigation. He would not apply this counsel to the case where an eccentric incumbent is outraging the feelings of the great majority of his flock by his freaks,—there he thinks the interference of the Ecclesiastical Courts quite legitimate. But where the offence is a pure matter of doctrine, i.e., of honest conviction, he would have all Churchmen abstain com- pletely from litigation, and let the formularies of the Church take effect, if at all, solely on the conscience and private feel- ings of the individual clergyman. Lord Salisbury ended his
.speech by a very wise and statesmanlike apophthegm,—" The policy of persecution cannot be pursued piece-meal. Either you must take the line of Alva or the line of Gamaliel. It is for you to judge from the history of our own and other Churches, which of these two policies best reflects the mind of Scripture, and best accords with the permanent interests of the Church of God."
Nothing could be truer. But we can hardly agree in Lord Salisbury's estimate of the impossibility of getting any change in our Church formularies. There is something ludicrous in the notion that formularies which it is agreed on all sides are not, and cannot be interpreted by all in anything approaching to the same sense, should be, on that account, immortal. The case, no doubt, is this :—A is reluctant to part with the Articles and Rubrics against Transubstantiation, because they are his warrant for rejecting what makes it all but absurd to talk of even Baptismal regeneration in the sense
in which it is apparently used in the Baptismal Service. B is unwilling to part with the passage in the Consecration service in which it is distinctly implied that the new Bishop receives the Holy Ghost by the laying. on hands, lest if he did, he should be delivered body and soul into the hands of the Evangelical "articles of belief," and should be unable to plead any formulary of the Church on his side. C holds the Athanasian Creed as a bulwark against rationalism. D approves the condemnation of Purgatory as a set-off against the very Romanising form of absolution contained in the service for the "Visitation of the Sick." Now, is it really credible that for centuries to come in a Church in which it is agreed on all hands that any set of these doctrines may be explained away by those who adhere to the opposite set, a long and very complex series of formu- laries will be maintained merely as forts against the enemy,—not for the purpose of teaching truth, bat for the purpose of being able to return a galling fire? Is it con- ceivable that as soon as we have clearly realised that (say) everybody who can honestly use the prayers of the Church in their full devotional meaning, is to be allowed to stay in it, whether, on the one hand, he holds Consubstanti- ation or Transubstantiation,—there is hardly a feather's- weight difference between them in any spiritual sense,—and a physical descent of the Holy Spirit through the laying-on of hands, or, on the other, he believes the Zuinglian doctrine of all the Sacraments, and has no faith in the doctrine of everlasting punishments,—is it conceivable that when we have fully realised this, we shall never have the courage to say so by the voice of Parliament, and to sweep away this difficult and intricate net- work of tests which only exist for the sake of balancing each other ? Is it inconceivable that when once we all know that three-fourths of the Church do not accept the high sacramental doctrine in its natural sense, and that the other quarter earnestly rejects the narrow Evangelical doctrine in its natural sense, Parliament will take some simple creed,—probably the Nicene, as best embodying the conception at the bottom of the Liturgy—and say at once that all who can repeat that Creed ex animo, and the Liturgies, whatever they may think on other theological questions, are competent to minister in the National Church. What can be less reasonable than for a
party which interprets one class of formularies in a strained sense, to impose on the opposite party the necessity of inter- preting another class of formularies in an equally strained sense, only in order that neither may have any advantage over the other Is a Church that can go on doing this, when it clearly understands what it is doing, a real minister of Christian Truth? Comprehension on the plan of putting equal weights into both scales, sacrifices that freedom which abhors the sense of weight. The Church is a Church of compromise, no doubt, as all Churches must be Churches of compromise in an age in which no score of people agree completely about the meaning of any one theological proposition. Still there is no occasion at all for the compromise to be one which should prevent each individual worshipper from holding his own view with perfect freedom. At present the vague idea still prevails that something is to be got out of the whole body of formularies which is consistent with itself, and which may be called the Church's "teaching." That
view is rapidly disappearing. There is a possibility of recon- ciling the various Formularies of the Church, just as judges
reconcile statutes of different intent by artificially limit-
ing the intent of each, so as not to come into collision with that of the other. But this sort of reconciliation is a
very different thing indeed from a coherent and consistent teaching, and this,—except on the main articles of the Creed, —the English National Church has not got. Directly this is universally admitted,—as one day it must be universally admitted,—it is doing very great discredit to British common- sense and political sagacity to suppose that it will not be acted on, and a true principle of comprehension substituted for the present awkward system of doctrinal set-offs. That would be as great a relief to thousands of intellects and consciences, as was the substitution of the Copernican for the Ptolemaic system of astronomy to thousands of calculators and observers.
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