Contemporary Essays In Theology

Front matter

CONTEMPORARY ESSAYS IN THEOI

CONTEMPORARY ESSAYS IN THEOLOGY

By the EEY. JOHN HUNT

Preface

vi

which no one who regards the interests of the nation could wish to see destroyed. The plea for disesta¬ blishment is the renovation and not the destruction of the Church. The answer is, that disestablishment in the circumstances would be something like destruc¬ tion. On the other hand it is admitted that there are crying evils in the Church, and these are so bound up with the existing establishment that the removal of them is hopeless while the present connection between Church and State continues. The grievance of which the Nonconformist complains, that a State Church is the cause of his social inferiority, I regard as imaginary. But even if it were real, so long as a State Church is a jmblic good, his objection would justly be set aside. It is a subject which concerns Churchmen far more than Nonconformists, and ought to be fairly discussed, irrespective of external agita¬ tion.

The best defences of the State Church are those which have been put forth by the Primate and the Dean of Westminster. And yet no two men in Eng¬ land are more insensible to the necessity of the only reformation which could both secure the greater efficiency of the Church and save it from disestablish¬ ment. So long as Church patronage can be bought and sold, or so long as it is vested in individuals, to be used at their discretion to provide for their relatives and friends, so long there will be an evil demanding immediate reformation. The Archbishop of Canter-: bury seems so much afraid of the people having any voice in the election of their clergyman, that the Times lately described him as even hastening from a visitation

PREFACE.

to help some vicar in Dover to get the patronage of t living out of the hands of the parishioners. The one great blemish in Dean Stanley’s Lectures on the Church of Scotland is his failure to appreciate th< Free Church movement. The Church of Scotland which, till that time, had always embraced the mas; of the people, was being threatened with the sain* evil which has long been passively endured in tb Church of England. The patrons were thrusting mei upon parishes without any regard to the special want of these parishes or to the "wishes of the people. Th Dean seems to think the Free Church cause suffi ciently refuted by the fact that Achterarder, the seen of the original conflict, after a few years, settled into haven of perfect peace. And so, to my knowledge has many an English parish after a similar presents tion; but it has been the peace of death. The peopl either become Nonconformists, or they cease to tak an interest in anything that concerns the Church.

The one great advantage of the Church of Englan at the present hour is its indifference to theologies dogmas. It is only a State Church that could seem the freedom which is now enjoyed by the Englis clergy. It is only a State Church which could grv the laity this practical lesson that religion consists i something that we are to be and to do, and not i holding some speculative opinions, about which me may differ for ever. There is not, however, much <

: which we can boast even in this. The Primate, jfijj recent charge, has told us that it is only of England that such men as and Frederick Denison Sfcrape© eonl^l^pfed

VIU

PREFACE .

home. It is quite true they would have been silenced in the Church of Rome, and they would have been fettered in any sect of Nonconformists; but, after all, the shelter which the Church of England gave them was but the casual ward for wayfaring men. Their lives were the lives of martyrs, i afflicted, persecuted, tormented. ’ Frederick Robertson never had any prefer¬ ment, but ministered in a proprietary chapel. It is true he died young ; but Maurice was almost forty years in orders, and never held any higher preferment than a church, of which the income was derived from pew rents; and this at a time when for the most part the canonries and deaneries, to say nothing of the bishoprics, were held by men whose names would sound like the very essence of emptiness. No bishop ever dared to give preferment to Frederick Denison Maurice. It is well to mark the advantages we have in the Church of England, but they are the best friends of the Church who are not afraid to confess that there are many things which might be improved.

N.B. The notes marked X did not appear m the Review.

Contents

TAGV

I THE CHURCHES OF ENGLAND . . 1

II. NATURE-DEVELOPMENT AND THEOLOGY.45

I

D URING the last two years Sion College has been emerging from the obscurity in which for two long centuries if has lain concealed. When the Dean of Westminster’s address on the connection of Church and State was the subject of comment in the daily papers, everybody was asking, Where is Sion College ? and very few people were able to answer. The great world of London has migrated without the City, and the few dingy buildings which form the library, chapel, and almshouses of this ancient foundation are scarcely to be distinguished from the shops and ware-

* Contemporary Review, April, 1870.

The Freedom of Opinion necessary in an Established Chwch in a Free Country, An Address delivered at Sion College, by Sir John- Duke Coleridge Macmillan’s Magazine, March,

An Address on the Connection of Church and State. Delivered at Sion College, Feb 18,- 1868. By Arthur Fknrhyn Stanley, D.D., Dean of Westminster. Macmillan & Co.

The Three Irish Churches. An Address delivered at Sion College, Jan 28, 1869. By Arthur. Penrhyn Stanley, D.D., Dean of Westminster. John Murray.

# Aperture on the Characteristics of Charitable Foundations in England Delivered at Sion College on March 12,1868. By Arthur Hqbhouse, Q»C. Longman, Green, & Cot The National Church Edinburgh Review, July, 1868.

The Church and her Curates. Quarterly Review, July, 1867.

Clergymen made Scarce. A Letter to the Bishop of London. By a Pan Second Edition. Hall & Co.

The Present Dangers of the Chut ch of England. By W G, Clark, ^

Trinity College, Cambridge., Mac m i l lan & Co., 1870. ^ <**

B

CONTEMPORARY ESSAYS.

houses by which they are surrounded. In the seven¬ teenth century it was the favourite resort of the London ministers. In the troubled times of the Long Parliament and the Commonwealth it was here they met to sign leagues and covenants, and to make ordi¬ nances against ‘Popery, Prelacy, Arianism, Soeinianism,’ and every other conceivable heresy, known or unknown. Even so late as the Savoy Conference the London clergy, who were mostly on the side of the Puritans, had their special meetings at Sion College. Two years ago the Eeetor of Bishopsgate was Presi¬ dent. Besides some other salutary reforms and im¬ provements, he began the custom of ' Evening Meetings,’ which have been continued by his suc¬ cessors in the presidency. At these meetings papers have been read on various subjects. Of these the most important are those which concern the [National Church.

Prom many different quarters the question of the State Church is forced upon the public mind. Outside, there is the Homan Catholic, the avowed enemy of the Church of England, working ceaselessly for its overthrow. The £ Liberation ’ Dissenter is scarcely less -active in his opposition to the Church of England so far as it is a State institution. The High Church¬ man is daily becoming less satisfied with the strong Protestantism of the Church’s standards, while the advancing thought of our day is rendering it impos¬ sible for some other men to be bound by the rigid* formularies of a past age. One other item of antago¬ nism, silent, indeed, but more important than all the ik&ers, is the steady and uniform growth of Dissent.

THE CHURCHES-OF ENGLAND.

I

It is true that some of the religious difficulties of our time are common both to Churchmen and Dissenters. Which of the two shall best be able to meet them is one of the questions at issue.

The old objections to State churches, as well as the arguments in their defence, to which we have been accustomed for the last thirty years, may now be set aside as irrelevant. It is not a question either of the duty of the State to support the truth, or of the sufficiency or insufficiency of the voluntary principle. In the hands of Dr. Stanley the contro¬ versy assumes a new aspect. The State Church becomes not, as it was supposed to be, an institution for the arrest of civil and religious liberty, but for their advancement. The object is not to crush the Dissenter by opposition, but if possible to comprehend him, and where that is impossible, to secure for him toleration and equality.* This view of a State Church is not something taken up merely to meet a present difficulty. It is connected with a theology which regards the Divine Being as carrying on His work of education by slow and silent progress in individuals, families, and nations. Its advocates are willing that the State Church principle be examined and tried by the experience of the past, not for a moment denying the many evils and imperfections inseparably con¬ nected with it, yet maintaining that it is the best

* * The plea of the Anti-State Churchman is, that there cap he no equal ity

but by the entire separation of Church and State. Our argument

such a separation is simply impossible. Every corporate body,

great property must be under the control of the State. The

the State endows the Church of England is another phase

raising that of the origin of Church property, and mu^i; hy

itself.—X

B 2

■within our reach.. The history of the past seems to say that no other was possible; that the growth of the Church in any State inevitably implied its connection with the State. What the circumstances of the future may be must be left to the future to declare.

When people speak of a State Church they often forget that the connection between Church and State has not always been the. same. When we take a con¬ crete Church, as that of England, Scotland, or Ireland, and say that it is to be disestablished, we have immedi¬ ately to state the items which make up what we con¬ sider disestablishment. In the case of the Church of Ireland it consisted mainly in excluding a few bishops from the House of Lords, who, indeed, had not perma¬ nent seats, and in leaving the Church to choose its own officers. The deprivation of a third of the Church’s property was called disendowment, and reckoned some- (puite distinct from disestablishment. There Whs added the public declaration of the. Government of the country that the Church in Ireland was no longer a State Church. It was this which constituted it a disestablished Church, so far as it is disestablished. It was left in possession of two-thirds of its property and all its churches, some of which are to be kept in repair by the Government, as in some special sense be¬ longing to the nation. State establishment in its first and simplest form is when the State allows the Church as a corporate body to hold property. The next forin is when the State interferes to regulate that property, or to put restrictions upon it. Another form is when the State directly gives property to the Church. The p.'l^ate connection may be where the State simply pro-

THE CHURCHES OF ENGLAND.

teets the Church; or where an alliance is made between the Church and the State, with fixed terms of agreement. It may be where the State constitutes the Church; or where the State, as the supreme ruler of all communities as well as of all individuals in the realm, is the final judge of differences in the Church. In one or more of these forms, every sect or religious body in any State is a State Church. There can be no abstract definition of a State Church. In every case it is a question of degree. Disestablishment, there¬ fore, can only mean a re-adjustment of the present relations between the Church and the State.

The history of the Church in England would furnish examples of all, and more than all, these forms of State connection. When the missionaries came to the Saxon kingdoms, they first obtained permission to preach’. As they made converts they built churches and began to gather property. In the condition of society which then existed, when a ruler became Christian it would be a great step towards the conver¬ sion of his kingdom. Christian kings, by taking the side of the preachers of Christianity, thereby made Christianity the State religion. As centuries passed, and the property of the Church accumulated, the civil power had to devise new restrictions on property left to the Church, which became equivalent to ah assess tion of right to control it. As the Papal claims to supremacy increased, so did the antagonism betwe^to the ecclesiastical and the civil authorities. The and the Pope both claimed to be head of in England. Henry Y III. vigorously of what his predecessors had hut

CONTEMPORARY ESSAYS.

not always with equal decision. He rejected entirely the Papal supremacy. If Ms daughter Mary brought it bach, it was even then in the way of alliance. Queen Elizabeth again exorcised the Bishop of Eome. TMs time the Papal claims were effectually dealt with, for not only the Pope, but the Pope’s religion, was driven out of England. The relations of the Church and State were changed. The Pope’s Church was dis¬ established. A new Church, to speak politically, was created. To speak ecclesiastically, a corrupted Church was reformed. Under Elizabeth the connection be¬ tween Church and State was of the closest kind. The Church was then moulded into a political institution. Out of the confiscated revenues of the unreformed Church the new Church was endowed. Had the Bishop of Borne been the harmless and politically helpless individual that he is to-day, Queen Elizabeth’s Church might have assumed a different .form. But with the great power of the Papacy planning for the overthrow of her kingdom, she was compelled to repress with an iron hand the Bomanist without and the Puritan within. Liberty of conscience, it is often said, was not understood in those days; but it was impossible that it could be either understood or practised so long as the national life was endangered by the great political power of the Church of Borne. The Puritan felt the oppression of State tyranny, and groaned under it. More freedom might have been given Mm according to our judgment now, but not'sd in the judgment of Queen Elizabeth. The Puritan wanted to be under a government distinct from that of the State. He wanted to obey Gfod rather than

THE CHURCHES OF ENGLAND.

man, -when he thought that the divine and the royal co mm ands were not in harmony. But no civil power ever permitted this, when it feared danger to its own existence. Christianity and the moral con¬ stitution of man have their foundation in right; but all civil government depends on might. The great 1 Leviathan,’ to use the illustration of Thomas Hobbes, must first secure its own existence before it can yield protection or liberty to the individual members of whom it is composed. All liberty to the subjects of any commonwealth must be measured by its compati¬ bility with the safety of that commonwealth. This we apprehend was what Hobbes meant when he said that religion, morality, and law have their origin from the State.

Since the time of Queen Elizabeth the connection between Church and State has been nominally the same, yet actually it has been very different at dif¬ ferent times. Under James and the first Charles a great part of the spiritual power denied to the Pope was put into the hands of the bishops. James I. was content that the bishops should be bishops by divine right, so long as he was acknowledged a king by divine right. This confederation of the king and the bishops ended in a revolution. A new Church, politi¬ cally, was established under the Commonwealth. This Church was as much the creation of the State, and as completely under it, as the Church had been under Elizabeth. The ‘ Leviathan ’ was again compelled ^ rule with might. Under' the second CharhgjpPe bishops regained some of their ecclesiasti^^pW'er. Under the second James the State Churchr-SsSisted the

CONTEMPORARY ESSAYS.

State, and obeyed God rather than man. It willingly served the Prince of Orange. It was fostered and strengthened by Queen Anne. Under the Georges it became the instrument of political parties. Since then the State has been gradually receding from inter¬ ference with ecclesiastical matters. The State connec¬ tion to-day is very different from what it was in the time of Queen Elizabeth.

The principle on which the Reformed Church of England was established under Elizabeth is sometimes said to have been a comprehension; but this is an ingenious theory rather than a fact. The Thirty-nine Articles plainly speak the language of the Augustinian theology which was adopted by the Swiss Reformers. Many of the bishops, in whose hands Elizabeth placed the government of the Church, had been in exile, and were full of the theology of Calvin, The old priests who had conformed to the Roman Catholic religion under Mary were allowed to remain under Elizabeth, but only on condition of their subscribing the Articles, and teaching the doctrines set forth in the Homilies. The Pope and the Pope’s peculiar dogmas were ex¬ cluded. The Reformers under Queen Elizabeth did not differ as to doctrines, but only as to ceremonies, and in these a rigid conformity was enforced and no latitude allowed. The ‘ comprehension ’ appears to have been the result of circumstances rather than of intention. It was not till the time of Charles I. that the Church of England was wide enough to admit the' Arminian High Churchmen, who came in, not by permission, but by mere might. Hew necessities de¬ manded the comprehension of different parties. "With

THE CHURCHES OF ENGLAND.

the High Churchmen came in such Rationalists as Hales and CMHiagworth. At the restoration of Charles II., though the Nonconformists, who had scruples about the ceremonies, were excluded, yet the Church was made wider. It embraced many of the Presbyterians, who were allowed to subscribe with an express permission to make an explanation of the sense in which they understood the formularies. It also embraced the Latitudinarians, whose views of Church polity and ceremonies agreed with those of Elizabeth’s divines, but differed from those of the High Churchmen, and whose doctrines, like those of the High Churchmen, were at variance with those of the Calvinists, which are properly those of the Articles of Religion. As an historical fact, the Church of England has become a Broad Church. Is if broad enough ? Or, what is perhaps a more correct form of the question, can it bear to be made broader ?

Sir John Coleridge distinctly declares that it is not his wish to change the formularies of the Church of England. His position is the matter-of-fact one, that if the Church is to embrace the thought of the nation some changes must be made.

‘An Established Church, ’ he says, ‘in a free country must take note of and represent the religion of that country, and if the re¬ ligious opinion of the country is various, the Church must contain a variety of religious opinions. No doubt it is a question of degree in which it is hard to draw the line. It is enough for me to say that the limits must be drawn far more widely than most people are prepared to draw them. It is idle to rave against the int6h&f& v and to endeavour by tests to convert the deductions of.4&a|ig! theology into necessary Christian truths. It is to myj||pLas certain as anything can be, which is contingent, that ii£||i® ffiurch remains established it will remain so by the sacriS*# present

CONTEMPORARY ESSAYS.

tests. Do not suppose, however, that this future, ■which I think inevitable, is what in itself I desire, or that it appears to me all good unmixed with evil.’

The history of the Church of England shows, we have said, that it is a Broad Church "by the force of circumstances, rather than "by choice. The State which, under Elizabeth and James, tried to reduce all to uniformity of doctrine, was afterwards compelled to include all without uniformity. The same formularies remained, and they were subscribed according to the sense in which each party understood them. While the State allows subscription of this kind, it cannot be fairly said that there is any moral obliquity in the act of subscribing. But to him that thinketh it sin, to him it is sin. There are men to whom subscription has been a burden—men who have thought that by subscription they were bound to believe, or to profess belief, in every statement of the Articles, even though it might be something which is now plainly disproved, or which no rational man believes. The usual view of subscription is, that the subscribers are bound by the sense of the imposers. The Hi gh Churchmen, who were the first to depart from the literal and grammatical sense of the Articles, yet claimed agreement with them. It was in the time of Laud, and with the object of favouring his party, that ‘His Majesty’s Declaration’ was prefixed to the Articles, forbidding any man to put ‘his own sense or comment ’ upon them. It was impossible that this deception could be long concealed. The theology of High Churchmen was utterly at variance with the theology of the standards of the Church of England.

THE CHURCHES OF ENGLAND.

When the party had reasoned itself into its legitimate position it was avowed that there had been a departure from the Articles. Tract XC. advocated the principle that the clergy are not bound by the original mean¬ ing of the Articles if another meaning with which they agree can be put upon them.

It appears that there are men still dissatisfied with subscription. The formularies of the Church are not in harmony with modem ideas. The complaint of the bishops of the decrease of candidates for orders increases with every ordination. And those that do present themselves for ordination are not what is called the 1 good men ’ of the Universities. The desire of Mr. Clark, the Public Orator of the Univer¬ sity of Cambridge, to renounce his orders, and the resignation of Mr. Sedley Taylor, another Fellow of Trinity, are but visible signs of what is invisible to the unobservant world. The progress which has been made in Bible criticism forbids educated men to view the Bible as it was viewed by the Beformers and theologians of the sixteenth century. Are men to subscribe formularies with the proviso that they do not entirely believe what they subscribe, or are these tests to be abolished ?

Sir John Coleridge dealt only with one of the difficulties that beset the Church of England. The question of subscription is only a temporary affliction —an acute disease in the body ecclesiastical. But the 'Church has an old chronic affliction which it has b^fipfe for centuries, and with as little hope of as the woman had who spent her all on This complaint maybe called the patroffiag^# 1 Church

IZ

CONTEMPORARY ESSAYS.

livings, including, as it does in England, the sale of benefices, and every other conceivable evil that may follow the triumph of Mammon in the Church. Such names as Julio de Medicis and Jerome de Ghinucci, among the pre-Reformation bishops, are connected with histories which tell us that the patronage of the Church was not better administered under the Popes than it was after the Reformation. Not better, we say; yet it was scarcely possible to have been much worse. Under Henry, Elizabeth, and James, many of the bishops obtained then bishoprics only on condition of giving up large portions of the episcopal revenues to the king or the nobles. The ordinary mode of obtain¬ ing a benefice was by making a bargain with the patron, either to give him a certain sum of money or an annual payment out of the income of the living. ‘The disease spreadeth,’ said Archbishop Sandys;

‘ for patrons gape for gain, and hungry fellows, desti¬ tute of all good learning and godly zeal, yea, scarcely clothed with common honesty, having money, find ready entrance to the Church.’ Bishop Jewel says,

‘ The masters of the work build benefice upon bene¬ fice, and deanery upon deanery, as if Rome were still in England.’ ‘Non-residences,’ said John Penry, ‘have cut the throat of our Church.’ Dr. Robert Some, of Cambridge, said, ‘ The sale and merchandise of Church livings is cried out against in court, city, and university. It is so common that it cannot, and so shameless that it will not be hid.’ The same* thing might have been said at every period of the three hundred years that have intervened since the days of Bishop Jewel and Dr. Robert Some. And to

THE CHURCHES OF ENGLAND.

»3

this day the sale of livings and making merchandise of the souls of men, is as common and as shameless as ever.

That the traffic in Church livings has not ceased, we are reminded hy the advertising columns of almost every daily or weekly paper. A recent number of the Ecclesiastical Gasette, which is circulated gratuitously among the clergy, has eight or nine columns filled entirely with advertisements of advowsons and nest presentations for sale. Six or seven ecclesiastical agents, in the open blaze of the daylight, advertise for purchasers of ‘ Church preferment,’ and call at¬ tention to their ‘private registers,’ forwarded on ‘confidential application.’ One agent says that he has ‘ one hundred Church preferments for sate,’ and that he has registered the requirements of ‘three hundred clients fully prepared to purchase.’ Any one curious to be initiated into the mysteries of buying the care or cure of souls, has only to enclose two stamps, and the ‘ private register ’ is forwarded by the next post. The second _ step is to enter on a cor¬ respondence with ‘them that sell.’ The recommen¬ dations of the different livings are of various kinds. Some have very aged incumbents ; some have pleasant neighbourhoods; some are near watering-places; others have trout streams, small populations, good society, and—the culmination of clerical blessedness—‘ no Dissenters.’ Dor one or two thousand pounds aag|| clergyman may buy himself a Goshen, with the-.p®^ pect of ‘ immediate possession.’

A stranger, that is, a secular persoar^^^F'^o clerical ideas, might suppose, pi-evious^^^^prieime

H to the contrary, that the life of a clergyman was one of entire disinterestedness and self-devotion. He may have heard of Apostles that went forth to convert the world without scrip or purse for their journey, and he may have wondered at their simplicity. But when he knows something of the mode of obtaining a benefice in the Church of England, he will see that the trade of preaching is not altogether foolishness. It is diffi¬ cult to understand how the English people, so eager for reform, and so deeply interested in all national institutions, should so long have endured the mal¬ administration of the property of the Church. It has become appropriated by a class. Livings descend with families. A prudent man who sends his son to the university, at the same time secures for him an advowson or a next presentation. It is one of the pro¬ fitable ways of investing money. Doing the work of the Church is only a secondary consideration, even when it is a consideration at alL Incumbents are now compelled by law to reside on their benefices; but what comes by compulsion has never the value of what is done with a willing heart. So recent as the early part of this century there was no law to enforce the residence of the holder of a living. In 1810, out of the 9,754 incumbents of livings in the Church of England, according to a Parliamentary return 5,395 did not reside in their parishes. They did no work; they simply received the tithes and rents, leaving their spiritual duties to be performed by stipendiary curates.* This represents so many thousands of men

* This argument is not quite correct. Some were pluralists, and did work in one parish —X,

THE CHURCHES OF ENGLAND.

JS becoming clergymen for no other end than to enjoy the honours and the emoluments of their office.

There is another aspect of the preferment purchase question which has not received much attention, because the facts connected with it do not often come to light. Some men have money to buy, or their friends'have money to buy for them. But there are other men who merely speculate. Any unscrupulous man may get a living if he has sufficient courage to make a venture, or sufficient want of principle to render him insensible to the results that may possibly follow. The modes of raising money are the same as in other cases where a man speculates without capital. The only difference is that in buying a living he must strive to evade the law against simony. The effect of this law, like that of tests, is to keep out the man who has a tender con¬ science, while to other men it is no hindrance. The writer of ‘ Clergymen made Scarce,’ who seems to have passed through every phase of clerical life on the un¬ beneficed side, speaks of a correspondence which he had with an incumbent who was to sell his right to presentation and immediately retire.