THEOLOGICAL TERTIUM QUIDS.
TT is one of the remarkable, and we think one of the most hopeful,
signs of the day that there is so great a growth of what we may call theological tertium quids, to borrow from Mr. Browning's use of that term in his new poem,—that is, of new and independent theological views combining, or attempting to combine, elements of thought hitherto regarded as absolutely inconsistent and hostile. Of all the curiosities of opinion of this kind of which a refined intellectual age is naturally prolific, perhaps the most remarkable is that which has quite recently been adopted by Mr. E. S. Ffoulkes in his very able letter to Archbishop Manning, in answer to the taunts cast by the latter at the Anglican Church for its Erastianism, and its subordination in matters of dogma to the State. Darwin, in his discussions on the modifications of species, somewhere takes occasion, we think, to express his conviction that all the graduations of organization connecting, say, the pig and the giraffe, with their supposed common ancestor, may some day be brought to light by geological investigation. Certainly there would be nothing to us more surprising in this than the disinterment, centuries hence, of so curious a variety of creed as that of Mr. Ffoulkes, which will, for the future history of theological opinion, be one of the most remarkable and unexpected links between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. Mr. Ffoulkes is one of the Anglican converts to Rome who has never retraced his steps, and who remains, on the whole as we understand him, better satisfied with his position in the Roman Church than in the Anglican, or at least not worse satisfied with it, though admitting some serious set-offs against its advantages. He has learned little indeed that is fresh in the Roman Communion except with regard to " praying for the souls of the departed, and invoking the saints in glory ;" he can say of both practices that he can unhesitatingly pronounce them "from experience to be full of comfort and of profit, of elevating and purifying influences ;" that he is "sorry for those who live in ignorance or neglect of them," and that he can "hardly imagine any person who has tried them in a spirit of faith honestly abandoning them." So, again, he has evidently learned to respect profoundly,—and this, again, is one of the genuine curiosities of his position,—" the Society of Jesus," and to look to it, as we gather, as one of the most likely instruments for restoring peace " through truth." lie regards the Jesuits as, at least in one instance, exceptionally honest in their exposure of the falsehoods on which the selfaggrandizing policy of the Pope has depended for success, and is never "tired of confessing his obligations" to them. Yet this earnest friend of the invocation of the saints, and special admirer of the Society of Jesus in England, writes on purpose to prove that the Papacy was, in fact, responsible for the schism which we call the Reformation ; that the English Church, in breaking loose from Rome in that matter was, to say the least, excusable, if not absolutely right ; that Anglican orders and Anglican sacraments are as efficacious and full of grace as those of Rome ; that the spiritual life of our own Church is as true, and in many respects more genuine, than the spiritual life of Continental Catholicism ; that the great English converts have by no means improved since they went over to Rome, and that their spiritual culmination, as it were, may be regarded as having taken place in their old position ; and that the Anglican creeds have never suffered from the secular interference of the State as much as it is demonstrable that the Roman Catholic creeds have suffered from precisely the same cause. Mr. Ffoulkes hints very explicitly that the Roman Church needs "disestablishment and disendowmeut " before it can recover its purity ; so far from regarding its temporal power as a condition of spiritual rule, he seems to indicate pretty clearly that to it have been mainly due its doctrinal and practical sins ; and, what is oddest of all, all these unfavourable practical conclusions with regard to the purity of the Church of Rome have, apparently, been greatly strengthened and confirmed since Mr. Ffoulkes belonged to her communion, though without engendering any wish or intention to retrace his steps into the communion in which he was born. On the whole, he evidently thinks it the duty of good Catholics, whether Anglo-Catholics or Roman Catholics, to stay where they are, whether in a branch Church or in the main body under the Roman Primate, and do their best for restoration of unity. But he does not hesitate to avow that this can only be brought about in the first instance by the repentance of Rome for her imperious and violent policy, and by confessing candidly that she needs much more forgiveness from her alienated children than they need from her. As far as we understand Mr. Ffoulkes, he does believe in the doctrinal infallibility of the successor of St. Peter when he speaks as the mouthpiece of the united body of the Church. He holds that St. Peter, confessing in the name of all the Apostles, and in answer to a question put to them all, was declared infallible by our Lord ; but that the very same St. Peter "the very next time he essayed teaching on his own judgment, after his confession, and apart from the rest, was told authoritatively, "non savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men,' "—from which he concludes that since the schism between the East and the West,—the first great breach in the Church, which he attributes solely to the Pope's ambition,—the Pope has never yet spoken with infallible authority, and cannot do so again till the schism be healed, and he can again answer, in the name of the whole Church, a question proposed to the whole Church for solution. Ile charges Rome with having altered, without any authority, the Nicene formula by the addition of the words "and from the Son" to the clause describing the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father, and having altered it under the pressure of crowned princes and without consulting any general council. Lie shows that these words were first interpolated by Reccared, the king of a barbarous and till then heretical race in Spain, who abjured Arianism in 589 A.D. ; that the addition was patronized by Charlemagne ; and that at last it was adopted informally, and without any public promulgation, by the Pope, at the instance of the Emperor Henry II. He further charges Rome with having based its right to overrule the proper provincial authorities of the Church,—the local episcopates of the different nations,—on forged "decretals,"
well knowing that it could not afford to examine carefully into the authority of those decretals ; and further, he attributes the Cru sades in great measure to the political jealousy felt by Rome of the patriarchates of the East, and her wish to supersede their co-ordinate power by her sole authority. To those Crusades and the unlawful papal acts to which they led, he attributes the first great schism in the Church, and holds that all the subsequent schisms were due to the continuation of the same ambitious and self-seeking policy. Notwithstanding all this, he holds that in theory there is an appeal from all the subordinate sees of the United Church to the chief See of Rome, which he wishes to have restored ; but he thinks it can only be restored by Rome's giving up the power she has usurped to interfere in national Churches directly, by her own autocratic authority, and limiting herself for the future to deciding questions referred to her on appeal. In the meantime, be believes that the true reformation of the mother Church,—the Church of Rome,—bas been more powerfully promoted by the offshoots of the Anglican movement, than by any movement beginning
within her proper fold ; and he commends the purity, order, sincerity, and manliness which are proper to the Anglican Communion as models and types for the mother Church to imitate. There is a vein of subdued humour in Mr. Ffoulke,s's remarks on Archbishop -Manning's change for the worse since he became a
convert to Romanism :—
"In the same way there is no ordinary person in his sober senses who could affect to discover any fundamental change for the better in you, morally or religiously, now from what you were then. There are some, on the contrary, to my knowledge, of your existing flock who profess that they have not half the liking for the sermons which they hear you deliver as Archbishop of Westminster that they have for the dear old volumes which you published as Archdeacon of Chichester, as fresh and full of fragrance to their instincts as ever. And I have 'heard the same said of another, whose parochial sermons, hailed as a masterpiece on their first appearance, have just burst forth into a second spring. People say that the sermons which ci-devant Anglican clergymen of note preached formerly, read so much more natural than any that they have since delivered from Roman Catholic pulpits."
Here, then, we have a most curious form of a theological tertium quid,—a man of thoroughly independent and acutely discriminating intellect, also of large historical acquirements and long research, who has not been kept in Anglicanism by any of the natural conservative forces of human nature, who had the courage to break the ties with what Anglicans delight to call "the Church of their baptism," who, in joining the Roman Catholics, moreover, has felt no offence at their customs or spiritual tone,—on the contrary, he speaks of them most highly, though, on the whole, he prefers the English Catholics to the Continental,—nay, who embraces those very elements of Catholicism most heartily which Protestants are apt to regard as the most alien from their creed, as, for instance, the invocation of saints, and who respects most what they have learned to regard with a sort of animal horror, the Order of Jesuits, and who, nevertheless, though he remains a Roman Catholic, accuses the Papacy of almost all the disunion in Christendom, and that, too, without impugning, nay, while zealously asserting, the primacy of the Roman See ! Surely a more curious illustration of the tendency of the day to what we have termed theological tertium quids could scarcely be produced? But there are plenty of others amongst our own ranks. An able correspondent, well known to theological journalists, "E. V. N.," one of whose remarkable and curious letters on theology we hope to find room for in our next issue, while absolutely rejecting miracle as commonly understood, and with miracle of course the resurrection of the body of Christ, still endeavours to find, and believes that he has found, a purely philosophical and a priori justification of his belief in the incarnation of our Lord. In other words, he rests the most startling and central doctrine of Christian theology on pure metaphysics, while consigning all the historical supernaturalism of Christianity to the region of myth or legend. Here, again, is a marvellous instance of the tendency of the age to produce new and curious theological tertium quids combining views hitherto held to be in internecine hostility. Many of our contemporaries and critics regard our own theological position as a third illustration in point, as regards, at least, the historical value to be attached to the Bible. Here,' they say, 'are critics who admit without hesitation the historical errors and confusions of the Bible ; nay, in many cases the moral blunders of writers whose writings they yet believe to contain the truest divine revelation and inspiration, and yet, making these admissions, they rest on the authority of such writings as these, the evidence of marvels which it is the whole drift of modern science to prove incredible.' And, excepting that we do not rest the evidence of the central miracle of all on the evidence of Scripture alone, but still more on the strength of the admitted facts as to the revolution in the moral condition of the early Church from one of utter despair to one of .enthusiastic and unflagging belief in their Lord's resurrection, we should admit this description of the apparent eccentricity of our position to be correct. Indeed, theological truth will never be attained, except by the growth and fair trial of honest attempts such as these to combine what takes hold of men with the force of truth in any creed, with the fullest admission of the difficulties to which it is liable and the most candid examination of those difficulties. It has been hitherto the main danger of Roman Catholicism that it has gained its hold on men by the audacity and success of the Papacy in asserting and, as we should say, usurping spiritual authority ; and hence, its authority being the very feature in it which has most contributed to win men, that authority has seldom hitherto been boldly questioned and put on its defence by those whom it has succeeded in winning. It will be a new chance for Roman Catholicism if any body of men can succeed in making good their position within the Roman Church who, like Mr. Ffoulkes, boldly assail its government, though still holding that the Bishop of Rome has received a real primacy, which, however, can only become authoritative when he speaks as the mouthpiece of a reunited Church. Of course, to us such a theological teriium quid seems wholly fanciful. To put faith in a primacy founded on such slender textual evidence originally, and one, moreover, which, if sustained by the evidence of historical phenomena, has the weight of time decidedly against it, which has been latent for more than a thousand years, and, indeed, never properly used, according to Mr. Ffoulkes, since the splittingoff of the Greek Church, would seem to us putting faith in a very airy cobweb indeed. Still, we regard Mr. Ffoulkes's speculations as an attempt to redeem the yearning for some positive and final authority with regard to dogma, from the gross abuses of that authority by Rome which any candid mind must admit ; and such an attempt is unquestionably necessary, before the world can make up its mind clearly as to the value of any such dogmatic authority at all. The more the Papal alloy is cleared away, and the more candidly it is exposed, the nearer we shall be to the solution of the question whether there is any pure ore at the bottom at all. Theological tertiurn quids are, at their worst, the most valuable of mediators between the old falsehood and the coming truth. Perhaps the truest, purest, and final form of theology will yet be evolved out of a bold effort of this kind.
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