Having read the recent (30 Dec. 1886-20 Jan. 1887) correspondence of the Bp. of Winchester and Canon Wilberforce, I have thought that a few remarks which recall the word of God on the matter in debate might be profitable.
The Bishop, objecting to the Canon's preaching and otherwise officiating in a congregational chapel within his parish, takes his stand, not merely on the adverse legal opinion, but, on two principles. The first is, “that the church of Christ, not only an invisible spiritual company, but the visible living organism, is a gift of God, and has lived on in an unbroken continuity from the days of our Lord's bodily presence to this day. So the church is from above, not from beneath; and it is not possible for a single man, or body of men in recent times to constitute a new church at their own pleasure. Another is that, though the church is divine, it has yet human elements, and so may require pruning, prudent and careful pruning, if it runs into excessive or unhealthy growth.”
“Unless these two principles are true, the church of England is indefensible, her raison d' etre is gone. The church is one with the church of the New Testament and the primitive ages; the church is reformed (when corrupted) on the exact model of the primitive body; these two are the pillars on which she rests. To give these up is to give up all, for if they are not sound the church of England cannot be defended, either (1) for having separated herself from communion with the Roman patriarch, or (2) for not simply taking her stand as one of a number of Protestant sects.”
The argument therefore is, that, if these two principles be true as applied to the church of England, Canon W.'s action ignores it, breaks down all boundaries, assumes, if it does not assert, that the Anglican body is but one of a heterogeneous community of human origin, and thus deprives it of its vantage ground and the hope which springs from it of the ultimate re-union of orthodox nonconformists with it. If the principle be untrue or inapplicable, “if we and all the other Christian bodies in England are to be described as alike ‘churches of different denominations,' then we are the most schismatical body in 'the world,' assuming a position to which we have no right, unless we are indeed the ancient church of the nation come down in a continuous stream from the fountain head. To concede this is to concede everything which is worth living for and worth dying for.”
The Canon in his reply of 6 Jan. seeks to soften his ordinary by pleading that his “ministering among his non-conforming parishioners was one of his special monthly services for the people” (the last Sunday of every month), “when the regular seat-holders of the chapel agree to absent themselves, and an effort is made to gather in those who are not in the habit of attending any place of worship.” He affirms that the legal opinion “is certainly new to me,” and argues that it would forbid to the clergy conferences, united prayer meetings, Evang. Alliance, and the like. The Bp. subsequently denies the analogy of the latter with the service in the chapel, as he more fully states the legal opinion, which one might have thought notorious to all men of moderate information.
But as to the heart of the question the Canon, whilst owning his adhesion to the principles already explained, contends singularly that by his action he has in no sense repudiated either principle, any more than the Non-conformists repudiated theirs by receiving the Eucharist at his hands in St. Mary's Church. Canon W.'s defense is exactly, where the Bp's letter put him, on the ground not of Anglicanism as the church of God in England, but as of so many Christian corporations in the country, though of course the best, as compared with congregationalism on the one hand and, with popery on the other. “I am of opinion that her equal cannot be found. As a living limb of the majestic vine,” &c. &c. That is, he recognizes the other societies as “limbs” of the same vine, though not so grand and goodly as his own. It is plain therefore that the Canon, albeit, as he says, “brought up in the straitest sect of high churchmen, “and “credited with holding high church opinions and views,” is really on low if not broad church ground. Indeed he in a measure avows his private theory to be the late Dr. Arnold's, of Rugby, who, though a pious man, was assuredly as loose ecclesiastically and doctrinally as such a man could be. So is Canon W.; and the Bp. as a conscientious Anglican overseer could but blame the transgression. The conclusion is what one might expect: after a great deal of fencing the Canon declares, “I shall, pending the decision of a court of law (!!), loyally and unhesitatingly obey you.” It is not to be believed that the Canon or the Non-conformists will be indulged with an appeal to Caesar on a question which the Bp. no doubt regards as among “the things that are God's.”
Let us appeal for a few moments to the highest tribunal: what saith the Scripture?”
The church or assembly of God is there presented in two distinct aspects; which cannot be overlooked, still less confounded, without results serious to truth and holiness.
(1) By infinite grace it is the body of Christ, Who cannot fail as the Head for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. (Eph. 4) “For Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for it, that He might sanctify it, having cleansed it with the washing of water by the word, that He might present the church to Himself glorious, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.” This cannot be set aside by the wiles of the enemy whose power is already null by His death and resurrection, as His ascension also triumphantly displayed. There is no such thought in Scripture as the rending of the body, though rents, divisions, heresies, there have been innumerable; nor still less can a member of Christ perish, though thousands who have borne His name have come to nothing. As a man never yet hated but nourishes and cherishes his own flesh, so Christ the assembly; because we are members of His body. (Eph. 5)
(2) The church is God's building, house and temple. Here man builds, and though the foundation be none other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ, he may build thereon not gold, silver, precious stones, but wood, hay, stubble; and as every man's work shall be manifested, so the fire of divine judgment. shall try every man's' work of what sort it is. There may be even worse than this, the corrupting or destroying of God's temple, which involves not only the work burnt and the workman suffering loss, but the destroyer destroyed: “him shall God destroy.”
Here then is the true solution of the riddle which Canon W. cannot explain any more than the Bp. The only “living organism” is Christ's body. The assembly was once visibly one. It “has lived on in an unbroken continuity,” not from the days of our Lord's bodily presence (Bp. Pearson might teach more soundly here), but from the day the ascended Head sent down the Holy Spirit to baptize into that one body of Christ; and as He abides forever, so does that one blessed fruit of His presence on earth, the assembly. It is from above more fully than the Bp. puts it, not from beneath; and it is not possible for any man or body of men to constitute a new church, as God, not man, constituted it once and forever of old. Here the Bp. is feeble; instead of being too high, he is certainly even in his ideal below the standard of scriptural fact. And, still more, can he be serious in believing. that the established church of England is “One with the Church of the N. T. P”
One might have thought that all men of godliness and intelligence were agreed that there is painful contrast rather than even resemblance, to say nothing of the claim to be “one” with the primitive assembly of God. Is the Head or chief Governor the same? Is there the smallest approach to the rich system of “gifts,” and the manifold local charges as appointed by apostles or apostolic men? Was there the very least allowance of patronage, lay or clerical, with its results in the sale of livings, not to speak of the sanctioned pomp and vanity of the world, and most of all in the highest officials who should have been the lowliest expression of dignified superiority to the world? And what is there in common between the membership of the assembly of old, “washed, sanctified, justified,” —as is by the highest authority predicated of the. Corinthian assembly, disfigured though it was by worse blots of a practical sort than any other in the New Testament—what in common between them and “every parishioner” in England (unless living in gross scandal) admissible and called to partake of the Supper at least three times a year, of which Easter is to be one for a tangible but not very spiritual reason? Tested then by headship, ministry, and membership, the dissimilarity is complete. I am far however from thinking that popery, or the Roman patriarch, would mend matters; for I entirely agree with the Homilies, once respected by the English clergy and people, that Romanism, is drowned “in abominable idolatry.” Further, the Tridentine decrees, and yet more in our day the egregious ones of an impeccable woman and of an infallible man, place that system as a professing body in the farthest remove from Christian truth, not to say from the church of God, and prove its utter evil in doctrine, to say nothing of holiness, discipline, and order.
It is the house of God, the visible manifestation of holy unity, the outward vessel where the Holy Spirit dwells, and works in and by men responsibly to the Lord's glory—it is here, where ruin alas! speedily came, not because God is not faithful, but because man is now, as ever, failing and faithless. No one denies godly individuals through the dreary ages that succeeded the first becoming more and more dark (certainly from a Christian or church point of view) after the apostles disappeared; till the excessive enormity of the priesthood as well as of a like people rouged, not loud and deep complaint only, but what is called the Reformation, when the Protestant communities broke off from their old papal connection, the state generally assuming more or less the supreme authority ecclesiastical for ages usurped by the Pope, And now especially the license of making bodies arrogating the title of “churches” is thought to be so right and natural that one wonders not at the Bp.'s denial that it is within human competency. Yet to make out the true continuity of the Anglican body through the dark ages of unquestionable idolatry of saints, angels, the Virgin Mary, the consecrated wafer and the crucifix, to pass over heaps of pravity only less deadly, is a problem which neither he nor any other can solve justly. Even that the established church of England (reformed as it undoubtedly is from the grossness of Romanism) is on the exact model of the primitive church seems far from a sound judgment of the facts and principles of scripture. Take one plain and essential instance—the assembly, as the apostle lays it down in the correction of the disorders at Corinth, the assembly in its principles and ground (1 Corinthians 12.), the necessary moral atmosphere of love which ought to animate each member (1 Cor. 13), and the decent order in which all things in it are to be done (1 Cor. 14): how can the Bp. pretend that this, the model of the primitive church, is even sought to be followed in faith by Anglicans, any more than by any one of the crowd of Non-conformists? No; they have all alike abandoned scripture in this all-important respect, the ecclesiastical administration of God's will; and have each hewn out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water. No one denies saints of God, and servants of Christ in Anglicanism and in orthodox societies of Dissent. But it is a false pretension that any one of “the different denominations” even essays to follow scripture in ecclesiastical action.
Neither the Bp. nor the Canon has the least proper sense of existing ruin ecclesiastically, nor consequently of the path provided for the faithful in such a state of things. Yet scripture is plain as to both, as has been often pointed out in these pages. Ignorance of this falsifies their thought, feeling, and conduct: so much so that instead of our true hope—waiting for God's Son from heaven, they are both looking for a good time to come on earth for the fallen and guilty church, doomed in its outward and visible aspect to wax worse, till the evil is so unbearable that the Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven in its unsparing judgment.
It is hardly honest to close this notice without a few words on the humiliating fact that the Canon marks “with peculiar thankfulness” Dr. H. Browne's “expression of opinion as to the extension of the merits of the Incarnation and Atonement” —not to dissenters merely, or Roman Catholics even, notwithstanding their dense superstition and idolatry, but to “the Mahomedan! or the Buddhist!! who in this life has never heard of Christ.” I agree with the Bp. that it is a bad and unbelieving principle (by no means confined to Dissent; as he seems to imagine), to ignore the unity of God's church for the fond invention of a merely spiritual unity by and by on high, which admits now of a multitude of unconnected sects. But I dare not be so loose in the face of scripture as to join in every, or any, human pattern of worship, s he says he has often done with Non-conformists or Roman Catholics. This is not the spirit of a confessor or martyr. But even such laxity does not seem so bad as to say, “I do not doubt that according to the teaching of our Lord (?) and Paul (?) many of those who never heard of Christ will yet be saved by the mighty power of His incarnation and atonement and resurrection.” The Bp. of Winchester is a professed theologian and therefore inexcusable for a wholly unfounded perversion of our Lord and His blessed servant; and yet here, where his Bp. stands committed to heterodoxy, the Canon breaks out into his loudest thanksgiving. Most Christians who know the truth will join in my sorrow for them both. It is a painful fact that a high churchman and a broad churchman will readily join hands in a notion which is purely human, without and against God's word. Justification for a sinful man can only be by faith of Christ.