1851. Decrees of Convocation no Basis for Anglo-Catholicism. 545

ratified in the thirteenth year of her reign. The Prayer Book itself, so dear to Anglo-Catholics as the Palladium of English Catholicity, had no other authority for a century than the private judgment of Parliament; and but for the political accident of the existence of the Commonwealth, which disestablished the English Church and compelled its re-enactment at the restoration of the Monarchy, would have remained to this day without the sanction of Convocation. And, lastly and decisively, when the Church of England was formally constituted by the Act of Uniformity of Elizabeth, the whole Episcopate, save one, refused to recognise that Church, and preferred to lose their sees rather than authorise her legitimacy and her faith.

These facts are decisive. It is certain that the reform of the Church of England was not the act of the English Episcopate, and that the opinions and the authority of that divine corporation, from which alone the Anglo-Catholic derives ecclesiastical legitimacy, were utterly overruled and set at nought in the constructing of that Church. And the conclusion is irresistible, that either the Church of England is no Church at all, or else that the lawfulness of that, as well as of all other Churches, must flow from some other source than the existence and the sanction of a divinely appointed instrument of government.

In order to parry this fatal blow, the Anglo-Catholic sometimes replies, that no prejudice can accrue to the title of a regular authority from the oppression of an external and illegal force. Granted: but neither must the acts and appointments of that illegal violence be accepted as legitimate. Violence can never confer legitimacy. Institutions originally set up by violence are often sanctioned afterwards by the acquiescence of society and by their de facto establishment and discharge of the functions of government. If this title is rejected, and the silent ratification of the governed is denied to be an authority capable of imparting complete legitimacy, then the institutions remain as illegal as they were on the day of their revolutionary creation, and it will be the duty of every man to restore the previous state of things as quickly as possible. The Anglo-Catholic, therefore, is welcome to repudiate the authority of the revolution carried out at the Reformation, if he will fairly accept the conclusion involved in his premises, that the Church of England, the Church of this day to which he belongs, is incapable of defence upon the Catholic theory-that her articles, her formularies, and her doctrines, have no other foundation than the will and private judgment of an oppressor and usurper- and that it is the duty of every Englishman to return to that Romish communion from which violence and revolution alone expelled him.

and

More frequently, however, the Anglo-Catholic insists on the ratification given subsequently by Convocation to the acts of the Reformation. This defence is equally worthless. It begs the question. Convocation must first establish its own legitimacy before it can claim authority to enact a change of government. First of all, it must show that both de jure and de facto it was all along the one sole, and lawful organ of government of the English Church. Will even the AngloCatholic undertake the proof of this proposition? But let us waive for a moment our, objection to the title of Convocation. We know that whatever sanction Convocation gave to the new institutions before the reign of Elizabeth it was partial only, extending to but a few of the proceedings of the Reformers-it gave under coercion and against the religious opinions of the Episcopate generally. It is clear that to accept such a sanction as conferring legitimacy, would be to reduce the divine rule of Episcopacy to a hollow sham: for what could be the value of the authority imparted to a new organisation of the Church and new formularies of faith by men who held that organisation to be a rebellion, and that faith to be false and contrary to Catholic truth? And as to the confirmation given by Convocation in the reigns of Elizabeth and Charles II., it is more worthless still; for it amounts to nothing more than a declaration of their own legitimacy and orthodoxy by the very men whom the Revolution had raised to office and power in the place of the lawful rulers, whom it had driven out by force. What would the assertion by William III. and his Parliament, that they were the lawful governors of this realm, have been worth, upon the principles of divine right, against the claim of James II. and his son?

We have now shown that the Church of England did not receive de facto her polity and her creed from the divine oracle of the Episcopate, but from the private judgment of the Christian society as represented in Parliament: and we arrive at the im portant conclusion that she is not built on a foundation of Church Principles, but on the Protestant dogma of the inherent right of every Church to shape its own Church government for itself. We now go further, and assert that de jure the clerical hierarchy, even if it had had the will and the power, would not have had the right upon Church Principles, of separating itself from the community of which it had formed a part. The English Episcopate, an insignificant minority, severed itself from the vast majority of the Catholic Episcopate. Minorities refusing submission to majorities must of necessity take their stand on some principle higher than the authority of the whole

1851. Perplexity of Bishops to find a Principle of Reform. 547 collective body. To what principle then does the Anglo-Catholic appeal?

Let us suppose 'the Episcopate to have assembled in holy Synod, deeply convinced of the corruption of Rome, and firmly resolved to shake it off. They are Anglo-Catholics: whatever they do, they must preserve Catholic principles inviolate. By what ingenuity shall they dispel the fearful perplexity which meets them at the outset of their deliberations? How shall they find a principle, which shall condemn the majority of Apostolical bishops of error, shall justify a breach of an established unity, and yet shall save them from falling headlong into the Protestant abyss of private judgment? To the bar of what tribunal shall they summon the Church of Rome? Not to that of truth and reason: for it is a court fatal to the accusers and the accused alike. The Bible lies open before them: the folios of tradition are at hand: but where and who is the interpreter? How answer this trying question-and answer it they must, before they can get a basis for their proceedings - and yet keep the Catholic faith? How condemn Rome without demolishing the Catholic theory altogether? They hold that there is One Universal Church: how can they rend it into fragments and destroy one by conversion into many? for this is the import of what they are doing. They are not excommunicating heretics-a sentence which Rome will soon fulminate against them with perfect consistency of logic; that were an easy matter compared with splitting the catholicity of churches acknowledged to be apostolical. At the very moment when they are breaking away from Rome, they call her a true and living member of Christ: are they not, therefore, dividing His mystical body into pieces? Gerson and Pierre d'Aillé, and other illustrious reformers, purified the Christian world by General Assemblies of the Catholic Church: why not appeal to such a judge? Alas, they know that the forthcoming English Church, with her articles and her headship vested in the civil power, can never obtain the sanction of an Ecumenical Council. And even such an authority, if obtained, might be excepted to as insufficient: for Cranmer might remind them that the divines of Paris held that a Council could not make a new article of the faith that was not in the Scriptures.' In this extremity a foundation has been found for Anglo-Catholicism by a consummate master of the Catholic theory. A living bishop has proclaimed it to a real Synod.

What was done at that time,' said recently the Bishop of Exeter, was plainly this, that here we had been holding errors in common with Rome. The Church of England was a Church,—it was a branch

of the Holy Catholic Church,-and every branch of the Holy Catholic Church has a right to rid itself of the errors which it formerly may have held. The Church of England did rid itself of these errors which it held in common with the Church of Rome: but as we admitted the Church of Rome to hold all the articles of the Christian faith, we did not separate ourselves from them. . . . It was Rome that separated from us.'

What a blow is here dealt to the Catholic theory! what a sentence of failure is passed on the institution of Christ! The divine model of government has not realised the great objects for which it was framed. The Apostolate has not kept the faith pure, nor protected Christians from error, nor preserved the Christian worship uncorrupt. The one Universal Church is admitted to have been universally in error: to have universally shared that human weakness which was supposed to have been the peculiar misfortune of Protestant principles. Who shall maintain henceforth that the Episcopal polity, which has thus signally failed, was endowed with exclusive legitimacy by Christ, and expressly too for the sake of accomplishing those great ends, truth and unity, which the chief of Anglo-Catholics admits to have been not accomplished?

Every branch of the Holy Catholic Church,' says the Bishop's theory, has the right to rid itself of the errors which it may have formerly held.' What right? Protestantism maintains that not only every Church, but also every single Christian, has a right to rid himself of his errors. Is the bishop disposed to admit the extreme right of private judgment? Very far from it. His meaning is, we presume, that a single Christian would have no right to pronounce his errors to be errors: he has no power to distinguish authoritatively between truth. and error. A Church alone can do that; and a branch is a full and complete Church, and may judge of the truth of doctrine and act upon its convictions. By this theory, the one Catholic Church is converted into many independent Churches: it becomes a number of branches without trunk or root; in truth no tree at all. One faith, one government, no distressing doubts between conflicting declarations of the faith, no uncertainty of interpretation, no rivalry of sects, no collision of authority, no diversities of worship,-this is the sublime unity which Catholic principles promise. And what is the substitute which the Bishop offers in the name of Anglo-Catholicism? Not unity of government, for the Church of England is a pure isolation: nor unity of worship, for what can be more diverse than the Greek, the Roman, and the English rituals?-nor unity of doctrine, for the Anglican charges all the great Episcopal Churches with

1851. Bishop Philpott's Idea of a National Church.

549

grave error, and is in turn anathematised by them as heretical: but similarity, similarity of outward structure, of form and ceremonial, coupled with a complete diversity of authority and doctrine; episcopates resembling one another in the transmission of an external form, but holding opposite creeds, teaching antagonistic views, and launching out fierce denunciations of schism and heresy against each other. Such is the picture exhibited by independent Episcopal Churches; and such is what Anglo-Catholicism must accept as the normal state of the one Catholic Church.

But what are these branches thus invested with co-ordinate sovereignty? National Churches, replies the Anglo-Catholic. Is he unconscious that to erect National Churches into integral Church units involves the very essence of Protestantism? A nation is a purely secular division, determined by geographical and political limits: and neither geography nor the State can, upon Church Principles, decompose the unity of the Episcopate into organic parts of the Church. Church Principles tell us that Christ's kingdom is not of this world: that the Church is a spiritual power, and her title derived from heaven. She owns no earthly superior within her own sphere: her constitution is divine. How then can a political and secular combination furnish the Catholic Churchman with a basis for parcelling out the spiritual power into organic elements, each element being endowed with the full prerogatives of the whole body? How can a perfectly foreign and heterogeneous principle the division of the world into States- take the one Catholic Church to pieces, divide its rulers into separate groups, and establish the law, that the government of this one Church and the determination of its faith are the prerogatives of each group, each severally for itself? All limitations which emanate from the State have the State for their ground and principle: the State, and nothing else, is their authority. Upon the Anglo-Catholic theory an assembly of national bishops can be nothing more than an aggregate of so many independent persons, with no controlling or binding supremacy of a majority, with no obligation spiritual or ecclesiastical imposed on any one to submit his will and opinions to the judgment of his colleagues. If such a synod, calling itself a National Church, constitutes itself into an organic whole, and as such performs acts, not of administration only but of sovereignty, it is clear that these acts of the united body will possess only so much authority as can be conferred by the law or principle which associated them into a collective unity. That law can only be either the State, or their own schismatical erecting of themselves into a separate Church. It is impossible