THE RESULTS OF THE LAMBETH CONFERENCE.
TIME Lambeth Conference was held in the dark, and it _1.. seems that the majority of the Bishops are even now, if not BO ashamed of what they have done, so little proud .of it, that they have decided to lay up the Report of their pro- ceedings in the Archives of Lambeth, and not publish it at all. But not the less are reports beginning to creep out of what did transpire, about which no one seems to agree. The Bishop of Cape Town at St. James's Hall "thought he might 'be permitted, without breach of confidence, to say one or two things about the Synod,"—and immediately said one or two -things which other members of the Synod are not prepared to support, and about which there is in fact already a little con- troversy grown up. If the Bishops are persuaded that their de- liberations can exercise no good influence over public opinion, that the more the public knows of the discussions by which their resolutions were preceded, the less those resolutions will be respected, we cannot, of course, wonder at their decision. But perhaps it would be well if, concerning those things which it is considered no breach of confidence to reveal, some little unanimity could be attained. What the Bishop of Cape 'Town said, for instance, at St. James's Hall, was, as reported, this :— "One of their last acts had been to endorse the righteous conclu- eion of the Province of Canterbury with regard to the appointment of- one who should go forth as a Bishop to minister to the souls of those who felt themselves as sheep without a ,shepherd in Natal. Their beloved Primate was prepared to join in recommending one 'to go forth to be the chief pastor in that distracted and most miserably circumstanced land."
And in a subsequent letter by the Bishop of Cape Town to 'the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, that prelate, after explain- ing that the Conference did not do what he is reported to have said that it did, at all, but only endorsed a decision of the Province of Canterbury, as to how a new Bishop might be obtained in Natal, if it were advisable and expedient to obtain one—on which point no. opinion at all was passed—further remarks :-- " P.S.—I have only to add that I believe that what was stated in another part of your paper, that only three hands in the Con- ference were held up against the resolution, is correct, but it is due to the Bishop of London to say that his was not amongst the amber."
From which it would appear,—what is hardly likely,—that the Bishop of London approved in Conference the opinion against which he voted in the Upper House of Convocation. On the other hand,—the secrecy of the Conference having -first been violated by the Bishop of Cape Town,—it is no viola- tion of confidence to say that one, at least, of the members of the Conference has no knowledge at all of any vote of this kind having been taken, of having voted either for or against it, or of having omitted to vote when others were voting. The truth is, that everybody differs about what was actually done, as everybody always does differ about facts not checked by the observation of disinterested bystanders —and all that is clear upon the subject is, that some prelates believe that a majority of the Conference followed the Province of Canter- bury in deciding how a new Bishop might be got into Natal, if a new Bishop be wanted there at all, but passed no opinion upon the great question of either expediency or prin- ciple. It may be that the Bishop of Cape Town is suffi- ciently in Dr. Longley's confidence to have been able to state
so, he has entirely changed his mind since he agreed to the formal resolutions of the Province of Canterbury, when he expressed in the strongest terms his opposition to the policy of electing a new Bishop in Natal. That, however, is a side point. At present we are only concerned with what the Con- ference is said,—by some of its members,—to have done ; and even they, when brought to book, have to admit that the Conference only accepted some resolutions of Convocation which, by the express statement of those who supported them, were not intended even to hint approval of the appointment of a rival Bishop in Natal. On this subject, if the Conference has done anything,—of which we are not quite cetiain,—it has only endorsed two resolutions expressive of the opinion of Convocation as to how a new Bishop in Natal might be elected without severing those who elected him from the communion of the Anglican Church, but it has not expressed any opinion as to the " righteousness " or unrighteousness of setting up this rival to the present Bishop of Natal. And even this endorsement, if given at all, has been given in such confusion and hurry that there is at least one member of the Conference who is quite unaware of having voted or omitted to vote on the subject at all,—of any vote on the subject having been taken.
This part, then, of the action of the Conference has been characteristically weak, timid, ambiguous, and without mean- ing. The pastoral, however,—the moral value of which we have estimated elsewhere,—appears to have been signed unanimously ; and there can be no doubt that the object of those who drew it was to get in by a side wind, amid a pro- fuse foliage of apostolic phraseology, one or two implicit decisions on questions of doctrine and inspiration. Especially, to the world at large at least, the declaration that "all the canonical books of the Old and New Testament" are the "sure word of God" will be taken as equivalent to an endorsement of the celebrated Oxford Declaration, that Scrip- ture "not only contains, but is the word of God," and an endorsement by many Bishops who opposed and even ridiculed that declaration. And the re-adoption by the Conference of the words of the Article about Christ having died "to reconcile the Father unto us," will be taken, and was intended doubtless by those who drew it to be taken, as a deliberate sanction of those words, not only as capable of explanation, but as most exactly expressing the dogma of vicarious atonement. No doubt the active tacticians who really managed the Conference gained precisely the end they had in view when they wrapped up those re-assertions of dogmas impugned by Dr. Coleus° in all those borrowed plumes of Apostolic love and holiness. And so far they have outgeneralled those of the Bishops who steadily resisted and denounced the Oxford Declaration, and have diffused a general impression that the Conference has declared for the absolute infallibility of the canonical Scriptures, and for the substitutive view of the atonement.
Of course, this implied dogmatic decision has no legal effect for those who belong to the Church at home. Tlitqatat of Arches and the Privy Council will not hold itew. te'Wy of the slightest legal respect, or think for a moment/of using it as an. authority on the doctrines of the Church. If within the jurisdiction of these Courts, any clergyman be accused of heresy, his position is precisely what it VMS, and will not be changed in the least by this episcopal letter. But though we cannot see that, as regards the English Church, there is the least possible tendency in this meeting to diminish the theo- logical liberty of any single clergyman, we cannot say the same for its probable effect on the colonies. We fear that its result will be to promote the rise of free Churches in the colonies founded on a strict dogmatic basis,—churches which will for the future be said, and believed, to have the moral sanction of the molt weighty and influential of the English Bishops, as the tritest colonial equivalent of the National Church. It will be said, with sufficient show of truth for the purpose of a popular impression, that both Convocation and this great episcopal Conference have lent a formal sanction,—though this, as we have shown, is quite erroneous,—to the consecration of a new Bishop in Natal, appointed expressly because the present Bishop is deemed heretical, a new prelate who would be bound at start- ing to believe all the doctrines upon which Dr. Colenso has been declared by his Metropolitan to be heretical. One of the re- solutions agreed to by the Province of Canterbury, and endorsed, as it is asserted, by the recent meeting, points out the following as the proper method of appointing a new Bishop in Natal, if a new Bishop should be appointed at all :—
"If it be decided that a new Bishop should be consecrated, as to the proper steps to be taken by the members of the Church in the.
Province of Natal for obtaining a new Bishop, it is the opinion of this House, first, that a formal instrument declaratory of the doctrine and discipline of the Church of South Africa should be prepared, which every bishop, priest, and deacon, to be appointed to office, should be required to subscribe."
Now, we cannot doubt that, whatever be the true facts of the case, the recent Conference, no less than the province of Canter- bury, will be supposed to have given a sanction to the course which it pointed out provisionally as the proper one ; nor that many will be prepared in the colony of Natal and elsewhere to adopt this course, and to constitute themselves into free Churches qp a dogmatic basis more or less implicitly sanc- tioned by the recent Conference, and under an ecclesiastical rule not liable to supervision by English secular tribunals. If they do this, indeed, they will, according to Lord Romilly's decision, be no longer a part of the Church of England. But for that they will not care. If they are received as the American Bishops are received—with open arms by our eccle- siastical authorities—and admitted to communion here, while the cold shoulder is turned to the colonial members of the true National Church in the colonies, the prestige both of orthodoxy and of episcopal recognition will belong to members of the schismatic free Church, and not to members of the National Church. It will become almost a distinction not to be liable to the jurisdiction of civil tribunals,—to be liable only to the judgment of divines. And thus we think there is good ground to fear that free Churches founded on a strict dogmatic basis will spring up in all our colonies, more than vying with the National Church in dignity, and exceeding it in reputa- tion for that doubtful piety which consists in zeal for swallow- ing formulas. The chief result of this Conference seems to 11B to be its tendency to foment "free "—i.e., dogmatic— Church movements in all our colonies.
And the next result may be a reaction from the state of feeling in such Churches upon opinion at home. Will the zealots of our modern orthodoxy be content to be sub- ject to the Court of Arches and the Privy Council, while they have brethren abroad so fortunate as to be judged by the narrow views of dogmatic divines I We doubt it. A Church free to be as dogmatic as it pleases at home must, in more or less degree,. result from the so-called free Churches of the colonies. If the dogmatic movement pros- pers in, the colonies, it will soon be disseminated in the old country. For a time, it may become a favourite distinction to wear a yoke which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear. But the end is not yet. We have no fear for the ultimate result. Churches founded on narrower dogmatic bases than ours will only split and split again, and show the utter futility of attempting, in a day when science and criticism are multi- plying thought and intellectual freedom faster than even Churchmen can stifle it, to narrow instead of enlarging the basis of spiritual union. If the dogmatic Church system need to be tried again by Englishmen in order to demonstrate as absurflp the necessity, not of a narrower, but of a far wider doctrinal basis than that which we have at present, we hope it may be tried. It can be thought hopeful only by men who are burrowing deep in their own little systems, instead of studying with open and candid eyes the great signs of the times.
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