The proposal to change the name of the Protestant Episcopal Church, considered in the light of true Catholic principles

Front matter

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PRINCIPLES

I AND THE

Introduction

Invited in the great and holy name of Catholicity to join the crusade against the name which our Church has honorably borne for a century and a quarter, and which was used as descriptive of the Colonial Church and the English Church at least a century before that, we reply that as true Catholics we are in duty bound to refuse our aid.

The essays and addresses embraced in this volume were intended to justify that refusal. They have been written from the point of view of the Anglican ideal of Catholicity. That ideal is derived from primitive antiquity. It is formulated in the writings of representative divines of the Elizabethan age, and of the so-called Anglo-Catholic divines of the Caroline period. These writers were not ashamed to avow themselves protestants; they felt themselves compelled to become protestant in order to continue Cathovi INTEODUCTION

lie; they would have been amazed at the attitude of the men among us who scorn and repudiate the title of '* Protestant."

It must be evident to any one who has followed at all carefully the agitation for changing the name of our Church that the fundamental motive behind the movement, on the part at least of its most active promoters, has been to get rid of the protestant character which was stamped on the Anglican Church at the Eeformation. This has been avowed again and again. The leading organ of the party of change has not hesitated to declare that the end the party has had in view for a generation has been to get rid of the obnoxious term " Protestant." The reason this elimination has been so persistently sought is that it would facilitate the grafting upon the doctrine and practice of the Protestant Episcopal Church the system of mediaeval sacerdotalism. Thus, in reality, this attempt to change the name of our Church is an assault on the Prayer Book. There is involved in it an attempt to substitute an ideal of catholicity completely at variance with the ideal accepted by the reformers, and incorporated in the formularies

INTEODUCTION vii

of the Anglican Church, so that in the last analysis the issue resolves itself . . . into a conflict between two distinct ideals of catholicity.

For this reason I have included in this volume two letters in which is set forth the doctrinal position of the Anglo-Catholic divines alluded to above, touching the chief points at issue between those who may be called Prayer Book Churchmen and the Reactionary, or Neo-Catholic, party.

I have also, in another essay, laid stress on the fact that the opposition to this proposal to change the name of our Church is in no sense partisan. It is not conducted under the banner of the Low Church party or the Broad Church party or the old High Church party. On the contrary, it unites in its ranks representatives of all three historical schools of thought — men who are loyal to the Prayer Book, and who in spite of many differences are linked together by the bond of fidelity to true Anglican principles, which they see imperiled by this movement of change.

Finally, I have given an exposition of true and false catholicity, endeavoring to set forth first the primitive ideal and then the viii INTRODUCTION

Anglican ideal of catholicity with special reference to the novelties of doctrine and practice introduced into our communion by the publication of the Oxford Tracts.

This, then, is the Catholic ground on which I have stood in the arguments presented in the following pages for rejecting the proposal made at Cincinnati — namely, to strike out the word " Protestant " wherever it appears in the official designation of our Church; so that the name should be simply " the Episcopal Church." The most conspicuous supporters of the movement for change have indeed announced their complete and final abandonment of that proposal, and are now advocating the name " American Catholic Church." Nevertheless it appears likely that there will be some influential delegates at the next general convention favoring the Cincinnati proposal. Should this proposal be, in fact, renewed, it will come forward stripped of the plausible plea then so effectively urged, namely, that it was an eirenicon under whose shadow the lion and the lamb should lie down in peace together. Events have shown that this proposal, far from making for peace, has been in fact

INTRODUCTION ix

a firebrand rekindling the flames of controversy.

As to this name which is now proposed, a word may here be properly said. Our friends say: '* You declare your belief in the Holy Catholic Church whenever you recite the Creed; why, then, do you object to giving the Church a name corresponding with that article in the creed; why is Holy Catholic Church a good name in the creed and a bad name in the title of our Church? " The answer ought to be sufficiently obvious: we believe the Protestant Episcopal Church to be a part of the Holy Catholic Church; we do not believe that she is the whole Catholic Church ; nor do we believe that she is the one representative of the Catholic Church in the United States of America. It would be untrue to say that our Church is '' the American Catholic Church ' ' ; she is, in fact, only a part of the Catholic Church in America; and it would be an intolerable assumption for us to claim that title, thereby excluding all other Christian communions from membership in the Holy Catholic Church. The Church of England and the Church of Ireland both claim to be parts of the Holy Cath-

X INTRODUCTION

olio CliTircli; yet neither of them has introduced the word *' Catholic " into their official title nor into the title-page of their Prayer Books; neither of them claims to be the whole and only Catholic Church in their respective countries.

Some repetitions will necessarily be found in this volume, made up as it is of papers on the same topic delivered on different occasions. They serve, however, to emphasize important points.

R. H. McK.

Washington, March, 1913.

The Anglican Chuech and the Vincen-

TiAN Rule of Catholicity 181

IX The Test and Standard of Catholicity 193

X

Doctrines and Practices erroneously

CALLED Catholic 227

TITLE-PAGE TO THE PRAYER BOOK AS PROPOSED

AT THE GENERAL CONVENTION IN

CINCINNATI

The Book of Common Prayer

and Administration of the Sacraments

and other Rites and Ceremonies of

The Holy Catholic CSurch.

According to the use of that portion thereof known as

The Episcopal Church

In the United States of America.

Together with The Psalter or Psalms of David.

Part of a Resolution which was to have been offered if the proposal to change the name of the Church had been adopted by the House of Deputies:

Resolved, the House of Bishops concurring, That by such action there is intended or implied no changed relationship toward any other portion of the one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, or toward principles established by or through the Reformation of the Church of England as those principles are enshrined in the Book of Common Prayer; but rather to set forth the actual continuity of this Church, through the ancient Church of England, from the historic Church founded by Christ Himself, which, from the second century. Anno Domini, has commonly been known as the Holy Catholic Church, in which Church we are accustomed to express our belief in the Apostles' and the Nicene Creed.

Shall the Episcopal Church Abandon HER Protestant Position?

stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. — Oal. v. 1.

This impassioned appeal of the great Apostle to the Church in Galatia to guard well their spiritual liberty has found an echo in the hearts of Christian people many times in the long course of the ages. We hear it again today in our own Church, calling upon Tis to defend the spiritual freedom which was purchased for us at the Eeformation.

We are confronted today by a serious issue. You are aware that in the recent convention at Cincinnati a proposal was made to change the name of the Church. The proposal involved two things. First, the assertion on the title-page of the Prayer Book, that this Church is a branch of the Holy Catholic Church of Christ. To this we make no objection; for it is only a reassertion of the statement which we make whenever we recite the

2 CATHOLIC PEINCrPLES

Apostles' Creed. Secondly, it involved the elimination of the word " Protestant," so that this should no longer be called the * ' Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America," but merely " the Episcopal Church in the United States of America." This, be it observed, would not apply merely to the title-page of the Prayer Book, but wherever the word ''Protestant " now stands in any part of the Prayer Book, or in the Articles of Eeligion, or in the Constitution and Canons of the Church, or in the Ordination Services, or in the Consecration Service, or in the Institution Office, it should be erased.^

You will perhaps remember that this proposal was defeated by a non-concurrence of orders. It lacked only a single vote in the lay order. But while it was defeated, we are

* The preamble to the resolution of Mr. Pepper reads: "Whereas initial action has been taken by the General Convention of 1910, looking to the designation of this Church as," etc. This implies that the new name was to supplant the old everywhere. Logically it must do so. And the last resolution calls for such legislation as may be necessary " in order to bring the official standards of this Church into harmony with the action therein set forth." The Living Church stated editorially that the purpose was that the word "Protestant" should be "dropped from all our formularies."

confronted by the fact that it obtained a large majority in the clerical order; and those who advocate the change have proclaimed their determination to continue the agitation for the next three years, so that when the General Convention assembles in the city of New York in the year 1913, the question will again come up for decision; and it is confidently claimed that it will then secure a large majority in both orders.

Those of us who oppose this change are of opinion that it would be disastrous to the best interests of the Church. The arguments which are put forward in favor of the change appear to us wholly inconclusive; and we are of opinion that, although a considerable majority of the clerical order voted in favor of the change, it is more than doubtful whether they represent the sentiment of a majority of the communicants of the Church.

Under these circumstances it appears to be incumbent upon us to submit the question to the thoughtful consideration of the people of the Church, with the view of ascertaining their sentiment on the subject, so that when we go up to the next General Convention we shall be able to say what the mind of our several congregations is upon this important issue.

I propose, therefore, on this and subsequent occasions, to discuss the several issues involved in this proposal, giving the arguments advanced in its favor, and the reply which we who oppose it make thereto. This morning it is my purpose to consider the significance of the word * ' protestant. ' ' We are told that it is a negative word, a sectarian word, a word that connotes division and separation. I affirm, on the contrary, that it is a positive word.^ Etymology, lexicography, and history all unite in refutation of the assertion that it is a word of negation. It is older than the Reformation, older than the primitive Church. It came from the lips of Christ Himself, when, at Pilate's judgment seat. He said: " To this end was I horn and for this cause came I into the world that I should hear witness unto the truth " (John

* The verb " protest " is used six times in the Holy Scriptures; and in every one of the instances in which it is used it has the affirmative, not the negative, sense. For example : Jeremiah xi. 7 : "I earnestly protested unto your fathers ; . . . saying obey my voice." Compare Genesis xliii. 3, 1 Samuel viii. 9, 1 Kings ii. 42, Zechariah iii. 6, 1 Corinthians XV. 31.

xviii. 37). He said to His disciples, the night on which He was betrayed, that '' the Comforter, " the ' ' Spirit of Truth, ' ' should ' ' bear witness of Him " (John xv. 26), and turning to His disciples He said, ' ' Ye also shall bear witness" (John xv. 27). Now the word ** protestant " is the equivalent in the Latin tongue of the Greek word which Christ used when He said these things. * ' Protestant ' ' is from the Latin ''protestor," which means " to bear witness." Here is the definition given in the Century Dictionary of the verb '' to protest ": "To make a solemn declaration or affirmation; to bear witness or testimony to; to assert; to asseverate; to declare "; and again: " To bear testimony; to affirm with solemnity; to make a solemn declaration of a fact or opinion. ' ' We affirm, then, that the word has the authority of Christ Himself. It describes the witness that He bore for the truth which God sent Him into the world to declare to mankind. It describes the witness which He commanded His disciples to bear for the truth which they received from Him. Our word ' ' martyr ' ' comes from the same Greek word which our Saviour used in this connection. The martyr is a witness to the truth, a witness for Christ, and the Latin equivalent to the Greek word ixdprv<i is '* protestant." Our Saviour, then, and His Apostles were protestants for the truth of Christianity, and they were protestants against the perversions of religion which the scribes and Pharisees had introduced. Again, the fathers of the Nicene age were protestants for the truth of the divinity of Christ, against the false doctrine of Arianism, when they put forth the Nicene Creed which stands in our Prayer Book today. And so, when the sixteenth century came, Martin Luther and his co-workers on the continent, and Cranmer, Eidley, and Latimer in England, were protestants for the ancient primitive truths of Christianity, against the corruptions and perversions of the truth, which had come into the Church through the instrumentality of the Church of Eome.^

Thus the word '' protestant " has a noble, yea, a divine origin, and a perpetual significance for all the ages. It is a great word and has a great history. It stands for the witness of the Church of England for primi-

* Jeremy Taylor says that St. Augustine was a Protestant in his belief concerning the Holy Communion.

tive and catholic truth, and for her witness against the corruption of doctrine by which the primitive faith had been obscured.^ We make no apology for it. It still stands for the same vital truths of our holy religion. It signifies the function of the Church as a witness-bearer, even as our Lord commanded and as He said of Himself.

Let it be observed that from the time of the Reformation to our own time the Church of England, from whose loins we are sprung, has been recognized as a Protestant Church, and has acknowledged herself such. The martyrs who laid down their lives in the Marian persecution died because they were Protestants. The great divines of the reign of Elizabeth acknowledged themselves Protestants. That illustrious company of divines of the Caroline period — sometimes called the Anglo-Catholic Divines — without exception, so far as I am aware, acknowledged themselves Protestants. The same is true of their successors in the Georgian period,

^ " Protestantism, as understood in the seventeenth century, was a positive faith, not merely a negation, as some would make it. It meant the Christian faith cleared from the accretions of medisevalism" (Rev. F. Meyrick, Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford).

8 CATHOLIC PRINCrPLES

and down to our American Revolution. I have not found that it was ever objected to by any conspicuous divine in the Church of England until the time of the Oxford Tracts, under the leadership of John Henry Newman and his co-workers, who subsequently abandoned the Church of England and went to the Church of Rome.^

The protestantism of the Church of England is indirectly affirmed by the clergy in the Oath of Abjuration, required of all ecclesiastical persons. '' The Clergy, therefore, in taking this Oath of Abjuration, have affirmed for generations that the successive sovereigns of England in communion with the Church of England are Protestants." The declaration prescribed by Act of Parliament in 1828, in lieu of the sacramental test, describes the Church of England as ^' the Protestant Episcopal Church of England and Ireland." The act of Union between Ireland

* " The Caroline theology, while fighting Puritanism, was, nevertheless, Protestant to its core. . . . Until the present day there has never been any ecclesiastical party or any recognized theologian that did not firmly and thankfully stand by the principles of the Reformation, or hesitated to regard and proclaim the Church of England as a Protestant Church" (Rev. F. Meyrick, Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford).

and Great Britain in 1800 enacts that the Church of England and Ireland, as now by law established, be united into '' one Protestant Episcopal Chvrch, to be called the United Church of England and Ireland." As late as the year 1870 the Church of Ireland in her Constitution declared herself a Eeformed and Protestant Church.

Further, this word *' protestant " has a, definite doctrinal significance. It means the assertion of the supremacy of the Holy Scriptures in all matters of religious belief; their supremacy over the teachings of tradition which governed the Church and overlaid the Scriptures at the time of the Eeformation. It means also the assertion of the doctrine of salvation by faith in Jesus Christ, through His all-sufficient atonement and sacrifice consummated on the cross. In other words, it means the assertion of the doctrine of justification by faith instead of justification by works. It means the assertion of the one mediatorship of Jesus Christ, to the exclusion of all saints or angels as mediators between God and man. It means further the assertion that the ministers of Christ are His ambassadors and representatives and witnesses; the ministers of reconciliation, and not a sacrificing priesthood, not a sacerdotal caste, not an order of men standing between the people and Christ as the necessary medium of communication with Christ. It means also the assertion that the ordinance instituted by Christ on the night He was betrayed was *' the Lord's Supper," the Holy Communion, and not as the Church of Rome affirmed and affirms now, the Sacrifice of the Mass in which the priest offers the body, soul, and divinity of Christ on the altar as a propitiatory sacrifice for the sins of man.

In other words, the word '' protestant " affirms the doctrine which is embodied in our catechism and our articles, and in the office of the Holy Communion concerning that Sacrament. And finally, the word *' protestant " is an affirmation of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, and the necessity of conversion, and of the grace and guidance of God, the Holy Ghost, in the Christian life from the beginning to the end. It is the assertion of the liberty of conscience against the absolutism of the Mediaeval Church. It stands for the direct access of the human soul to Christ without a mediating priesthood.

And now let me call attention to the fact that the assertion of the Protestant character of our Church is not at all in conflict with her position as a branch of the Holy Catholic Church of Christ. The Anglican communion has ever held herself loyal to the Catholic faith — professes, indeed, that she is a part of the Catholic Church. Her great divines and apologists have ever maintained that she stands upon Catholic ground; that her faith is the Catholic faith ; that her order is the Catholic order; that her liturgy is derived from Catholic sources; that her rites and ceremonies have been established upon Catholic principles. But in order to maintain these Catholic principles it became necessary at the Eeformation to purify the Church of the uncatholic doctrines and practices which in the course of ages had grown up. In other words, in order to remain Catholic, it was necessary for the Anglican Church to become Protestant. Thus Bishop Jewel indignantly repels the charge made by Harding, his Jesuit antagonist : ' ' You say we have forsaken the Catholic Church; nay, we are returned to the CatholiQ Church of Christ." Again he says: ^' We have returned to the Apostles and the ancient Catholic Fathers." We lay it down as a fundamental axiom, that the true Catholic must become a Protestant when the one faith once delivered is imperiled, either by addition or diminution. The fathers of the English Reformation were Protestants against the heresies and usurpations of the Church of Rome, when they threw off the yoke of that Church, and established the Reformed Liturgy of the Church of England. Thus, the Church of England, in order to remain Catholic, was compelled to become Protestant; and today her Protestantism is an indispensable note of her true Catholicity. It is interesting to note that the members of the Church of England who came over with Lord Baltimore's colonists in 1634 called themselves '' Protestant Catholics."

It follows that to call our Church Protestant in no way impeaches her antiquity or her apostolicity. In acknowledging her to be Protestant we do not make her date from the Reformation, any more than the adoption of the Nicene Creed made the Christian Church begin in the year 325! This has been the understanding of the great divines of the English Church from the Eef ormation down to the period of the Oxford Tracts: Jewel, Hooker, Jeremy Taylor, Andrewes, Cosin, Bull, Beveridge, Bramhall, Ussher, and Pearson. These great men did not repudiate the Protestant position of the Church of England. On the contrary, they justified it, they defended it, they gloried in it. The Reformation was, in their eyes, a purification that had become imperative in order to save Catholic truth. As Jeremy Taylor puts it, "■ The Church of England looked in the glass of Scripture and pure antiquity, and washed away those stains with which time and inadvertency and tyranny had besmeared her." Even Archbishop Laud declared that he held to ** the true Protestant religion established in the Church of England. "1

To this day the Church of England stands upon Protestant ground, and is officially recognized as a Protestant Church. The new royal declaration recently adopted by the English Parliament reads as follows : ' ' I do solemnly and sincerely, in the presence of

^ In another place he says, " And the Church of England is Protestant too."

God, profess, testify, and declare that I am a faithful member of the Protestant Church as by law established in England."

And yet, my friends, in the face of all this, it was proposed in our recent General Convention, and it will be proposed again three years hence, that we should change the name of this Church — that we should blot out from our escutcheon the word ** Protestant," hallowed as it is by such great historical associations; expressive as it is of the Catholic position of this Church on the great fundamental verities of the Gospel; consecrated as it is by the blood of the martyrs. And upon what ground? I will today mention but one of the reasons given by those who favor this change. We are told, as I have said, that " Protestant " is a negative word; that it is a word of division; that it is a sectarian word ; that it does not register the divine notes which make this Church an integral part of the historical body of Christ, the one Catholic and Apostolic Church. We, on the contrary, maintain that the word '^ Protestant " is a positive word; a word of affirmation and not of negation ; that it is, as one has said, " a noble word, more hallowed by high and sacred associations, and representing greater victories for God's truth and human righteousness and progress in modern times, than any other word which can be named." We maintain that it does register the divine notes of the Church. It stands for the open Bible; it stands for the supremacy and divine authority of Holy Scripture, as the final and supreme standard of religious truth and Christian life. It stands for the purity of the faith once delivered to the Saints. It stands for the liberty wherewith Christ has set His people free. It stands for the primitive faith of the Church as against those corrupt doctrines and practices which were thrown off in the sixteenth century. And it stands for the liberty of the Episcopate.

In conclusion, let me say that this subject has a peculiar interest in connection with the precious service of the Holy Communion in which we are to engage today. It is to our Protestant reformers that we owe it that, instead of the superstitious and unscriptural service of the Mass, we have today the service of the Holy Communion, the Lord's Supper, according to the institution of Jesus

Christ. It was around the doctrine of the Mass that the great battles of the Eeformation were fought. Archbishop Cranmer, whose hand drew up our Communion service, called the Mass *' the Devil's own invention." He asserted that transubstantiation and the sacrifice of the Mass were '* the roots of the tree of Popery." He and his fellow reformers saw in the doctrine of transubstantiation and in the sacrifice of the Mass the complete denial of the revelation of the Gospel of Christ. It was because they denied this doctrine that they suffered martyrdom. They died at the stake that the Holy Communion might be restored to the people in place of the sacrifice of the Mass. This was the crucial question at issue in the Reformation. It was for this that two hundred and seventy-seven persons — men, women, and children — were burned at the stake in the reign of Queen Mary. It was for this that eight hundred learned Englishmen fled to the Continent during that same reign to save their lives.

Is it strange, then, that the word ' ' Protestant " is to us a sacred word, enshrined in historical associations that are closely intertwined with all that is most noble and most heroic in the history of the Church? It is indeed, as has been said, ** the echo of a battle cry," but that battle cry is just as necessary today as it was three hundred years ago.

My brethren, this question must in the end be decided by the voice of the communicants of the Church, male and female. It is for you to say whether you want this great historic word that stands for liberty of conscience and purity of doctrine to be blotted out of your Prayer Book wherever it now occurs. Can this be done without repudiating the doctrine for which it stands? Can it be done without casting reproach upon the martyrs of the Reformation? Can it be done without repudiating the splendid history for which the word ** Protestant " stands? Shall we confess that the Reformation was a mistake, if not a crime? Shall we say by this act that the whole history of these wellnigh four hundred years had all a false motive, an unreal basis? And shall we do this at a time when both here and in England many of the distinctive doctrines of the Reformation are being repudiated — when

Auricular Confession, and Reservation of the Sacrament, and Encharistic Adoration, and Invocation of Saints are widely practiced, and when strenuous efforts are making to bring back the Sacrifice of the Mass? I leave the question with you.^

* The following letter appeared in the Church press the last week in November, 1912:

Mb. Editob, — Allow me to lay before your readers the following analysis of the vote in the General Convention at Cincinnati, upon the question of striking out the word " Protestant " from the official name of the Church ; so that it should henceforth be known as " The Episcopal Church." It appears that in the clerical vote forty-two dioceses voted in favor of the change and only fifteen voted against it. Also, that in the lay vote thirty-one dioceses voted in favor of the change and only twenty- four against it. Then there were in the clerical vote ten dioceses " divided " and in the lay vote eight dioceses " divided."

I have made a calculation of the comparative strength of this vote reckoned by communicants; and it appears that the affirmative vote in the clerical order in favor of the change represented 448,960 communicants, and the negative vote opposed to the change in the clerical order represented 340,678 communicants. As to the lay vote, the dioceses voting in favor of the change represented 345,479 communicants; the dioceses voting against the change in the lay vote represented 431,253 communicants. In other words, supposing the clerical vote to represent the mind of the Church, we have 448,000 communicants in favor of the change and 340,000 communicants opposed. On the other hand, if we take the lay vote as representing the mind of the Church, we have 431,000 opposed and 345,000 in favor of the change. Thus we have the interesting fact that there is almost a complete balance between the communicant strength of the diocesea favoring the change and that of those opposing the change.