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DR. LUSHINGTON'S JUDGMENT AND

FEASIBLE CHURCH REFORM.

[1862.]

THE word Theocracy is used with some latitude and uncertainty by European historians. But if we analyze its prevalent applications, we may find that an institution receives this name when its upholders assume it to have a divine sanction which shields it from human criticism, and indeed brands that criticism as an impiety. Such institutions carry on their face a prohibition of gradual improvement by successive reforms; and therefore, unless they simultaneously assert for themselves an infallibility and a supernatural origin, are really self-condemned. The Turkish Dominion professes to rest on the Koran: and, difficult as it may be to find the first link between that particular dynasty and the sacred book, nevertheless the constant reference to its authority for the principles of political right sustains the sincere belief that the empire rests on irrefragable divine authority. The Papacy, also, which pertinaciously maintains itself to be a divine growth out of a divine root, a building raised without hands by the work of the same Spirit which after laying the apostolic foundation never since failed in energy, can plausibly maintain (however false in the eye of an historian are the details asserted), that no human science or statesmanship may legitimately revise and reform the creed or the practices of the Church. But the Anglican Church —whether through the tyrannical recklessness of princes and statesmen or through the bigoted folly of theologians-has grasped at a Theocratic sceptre by mere imitation of its predecessors, after deliberately renouncing all the pretensions by which alone such assumption can be defended from the most offensive imputations: and, while claiming for priests and bishops spiritual powers of vague but mighty mystery, subjects those priests and bishops to a degrading yoke, nay, puts them as it were into the felon's dock, if they dare to use their reason on divine things and

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on the Scriptures as freely as did Cranmer, Hooper, Latimer-all, in short, who broke loose from Popery to establish the Anglican Church.

The pernicious and odious slavery to which the bishops and clergy are subjected by the LAITY, who put no such fetters on themselves, is a phenomenon to which no "High Churchman" has a right to shut his eyes. It is usual with them, we are aware, to say as little as possible about the Act of Uniformity, and try to represent the existing laws of the Church to have been made by the bishops and clergy, because the assent of Convocation was given to them. It suffices to reply, that as all individual clergymen were ejected who refused assent, so would their representatives in Convocation have been ejected had they refused. But let us waive this point for a moment. We do not deny that the legislature which enacted the existing system, followed the authority of certain episcopalian divines freshly restored to dignity. Suppose for a moment that the legal sanction had come from these divines, and not from the lay-parliament which freely chose to enact their opinions. Are then the bishops and deans restored by Charles II. ostensibly wiser and better men, higher in spiritual knowledge and authority, than the existing dignitaries of the Church? Will any one of these who recently attacked the Essayists and Reviewers— will the Bishop of Salisbury, of Exeter, or of Oxford-so trample down his own episcopal dignity as to say: "I have indeed received from the Most High power to bind and to loose, power to bestow the Spirit of God by the laying on of my hands. I can lift up my face to heaven, and say boldly to a young man in presence of the congregation-Receive thou the Holy Ghost. Whose sins thou remittest, they are remitted; and whose sins thou retainest, they are retained. But while I am invested with this efficacious power, bestowed originally by Christ on his Apostles, whereby I exercise apostolic functions, yet I am not on the same spiritual eminence as the co-exiles of Charles II. They were free to study what is true I have only to ask, what they and their fellows have bid to be enacted. They were free to try doctrine by the test of its agreement with the Scripture, with the consent of wise and holy men, with facts of human nature and of science, with the dictates of individual conscience and common sense. They did so compare and so test the alleged doctrines of the Romanist and of the Puritan churches. By this process they made for me an authoritative system, which I am not permitted to criticize, but am bound humbly to believe." If a prelate remarkable for

strength of mind were thus to speak-for instance, the Bishop of Exeter or of St. David's-it would be simply impossible for the public to believe his sincerity. What indeed can be meant by this mighty and awful power of bestowing the Holy Spirit? We have no right to insult the bishops by implying that they do not believe themselves to possess it, or that they degrade the profoundest and noblest of Christian thoughts-that in-dwelling of God in the conscience of man which is called God's Spirit in the heart-into some material virus communicable by outward touch. We take for granted that they must believe the priest who has power to remit or retain sin to have a peculiar and divine insight as to what is sin; and that the bishop who knows that a candidate is the right man to invest with this power abides in a still closer consciousness of the mind and judgments of God. If any one who believes himself invested with it be made somewhat overbearing, that does not seem to deserve wonder: but if at the same time he believe it to be fit, decent, or rather, not very indecent and absurd, for others to dictate to him by law what doctrines are true, what false, and forbid to him even the liberty exercised by his predecessors at the times of the successive reforms, this would seem to be a moral portent.

Nearly all the outcry which has been made (we do not say unnaturally or unjustly) against the Essayists and Reviewers, goes upon the current doctrines of Christian divines (which we are sure the bishops will not disown), that Unbelief is Sin. We are then at liberty to suppose that Professor Jowett or Dr. Rowland Williams, on becoming painfully conscious of some unbeliefunbelief, perhaps, in the genuineness of the book of Daniel, or of the soundness of the received doctrine of the Atonement-had followed the prescribed rules of the Church in order to relieve his conscience. We may, without offence, suppose him to have sought a private interview with Bishop Thirlwall, who has assuredly very often made the public invitation, "If any man be distressed in conscience, . . . let him come unto me, or to some other discreet and worthy minister of God's word," &c. Imagine Dr. Williams to confess to his Ordinary his soreness of conscience under the painful doubt whether the Propitiation wrought by Christ consisted in reconciling His Father to us by his own bloodshedding, and to ask of him absolution for the sin, if it be a sin. In more ways than one this would put the bishop into an unpleasant dilemma: we shall dwell on but a small part of the case. It must be inferred confidently, from the recent facts, that he would

pronounce such unbelief, if obstinately persisted in, to be a great and dreadful sin; but would be willing to administer absolution for it, if the sin were cordially renounced. Yet so to deal with the case is a very different thing from saying with Dr. Lushington, "You are bound by Act of Parliament to believe the common doctrines, and you must not assume the layman's right of private judgment." He who is warranted, in the name of the Most High, to pronounce an opinion to be a sin, and to absolve the sin when the sinner recants, has not merely an insight into divine truth wholly independent of the Anglican enactments (for that, it is hoped, we all may have) but has a right to speak with divine authority on the question, what opinions are sin, and what are not. And yet, bishops with even greater pretensions, and priests who have received from them a strictly divine power, are to be put in bondage to a Parliament of Charles II.! What is this, but coarsely to treat their prerogatives as a convenient but empty hypocrisy ?

We are aware that there is a theory held by some amiable and eccentric clergymen, that Subscription is no Bondage. A pamphlet with this title, some years back, was not welcomed by the High Church as containing a true and noble thought, but on the contrary brought on the author the rough sarcasm of being ready to subscribe anything without feeling bound to believe it. But if any one can seriously hold subscription to be no bondage, the recent criminal prosecutions for ever put an end to such a notion. Dr. Lushington indeed often reminds us that he is bound in every case of doubt to give the benefit to the accused party (to the very great advantage of the accused), because the charge is that of crime. While the Bishop of St. David's was yet a layman, he felt free to translate the treatise of a pious, learned, and highly-esteemed German clergyman on the Gospel of St. Luke. As a bishop, if he still felt free to do the same thing, he might be roughly convinced of his error by being brought up as a criminal to be tried by one or more lay-judges. We are therefore safe in saying, that he knows Subscription to be Bondage.

It not only is so, but is meant to be so. Where all upright and sound-minded men agree, as on the rudiments of moral duty, a creed might be constructed which all would avow without bondage; but for that very reason, there would be no motive for exacting subscription to it. The creeds enforced by law are popularly and most accurately termed test-articles. Because it is and was notorious, that very many thoughtful, good, and pious

men do not believe them; for this very reason they are imposed, in order to exclude all such men. If all believed the ecclesiastical Trinity, there could be no motive for imposing the Athanasian Creed and the other Trinitarian portions of the formularies; but the clergy are tied down to the belief. While a prisoner makes no effort to go beyond the length of his chain, he may manage to convince himself that he wears no chain at all. But when he sees one of his fellow-captives violently pulled back in the indiscreet attempt to go too far, it is more like a maniac than a wise man to hug himself in the fancy, that, because he chooses to submit without a struggle, he is not himself equally in chains. It is remarkable that Dr. Lushington adduces a clause of the Athanasian Creed as condemnatory of Mr. Wilson, not on the matter of the Trinity (as to which doctrine ingenious philosophers know how to riot in Platonic freedom), but on the ruthless belief in everlasting punishment. On other doctrines of the Church. the learned judge finds great difficulty in condemning the accused; that is to say, in a criminal trial he is bound to admit great latitude, and he finds their philosophical phraseology very hard to understand. But nothing can be clearer than the doctrine of eternal punishment in the Creed; and here the judge peremptorily forbids a clergyman to extend his charity beyond what is written. If the judge himself do not keep the faith whole and undefiled, as expounded in that creed, the clergyman is bound to believe that the judge will, without doubt, perish everlastingly.

The bondage of the clergy is nowhere so remarkable as in the Universities, because these are intended to be schools of theological learning. The Church has been used to glory over the Dissenters, as though she alone had a learned clergy. It is true that the Academical Degree does not at all secure this: it does but give a gentlemanly order of clergy. Nevertheless, the apparatus of Theological Professors, the study of Ecclesiastical History, Evidences of Christianity, Scientific Exposition, in an atmosphere highly charged with intellectual activity and its subtlest forces, combine to invite the academic theologian to dangerous inquiries. Even if his mind be ever so little active, yet if it have mere receptivity, to study the history of the past, or closely examine the original Scriptures, gravely expose him to become too wise for his subscriptions. Of what use is it to become learned? An ecclesiastical judge may reply, ex-officio, "In order to defend the legally enacted system." But man was created to follow God's truth, not to prostitute his intellect to the mere upholding of an

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