THE APPOINTMENT OF BISHOPS.
HE decisive refusal of the King's Bench Division of 1 the High Court to order the holding of what may not irreverently be called a " scratch" trial of Canon Gore for heresy by the Primate's Vicar-General, has commended itself to the broad good sense and good feeling of the country at large. Nor, we thick, can there be much, if any, diversity of opinion among plain persons who have read the arguments and the judgments that the Lord Chief Justice and his colleagues have determined the matter before them in accordance with the natural reading of the Tudor statutes concerned, and the obvious negative teaching of the practice of more than three and a half centuries. That Henry VIII. for a moment contemplated, or that the Parliament which was so anxious to oblige him thought • that he contem- plated, a serious, or indeed any, inquiry by the Arch- bishop, or his representative, into the fitness for episcopal office of any person whom, at the King's bidding, a Dean and Chapter should• have elected as Bishop, is what hardly anybody out of a Law Court would seriously maintain. And as the Judges very plainly pointed out, the whole tone and drift of the principal Act (that of the twenty-fifth year of Henry VIII.) which governs the question is totally at variance with , the idea that any hesitation or delay on the part of the Archbishop would be regarded as tolerable. On the one hand, it contains no kind of reference to the hold- ing of any inquiry in connection with the Archbishop's confirmation of the election of a man appointed by the King to a bishopric ; and on the other hand, it lays down that refusal on the Archbishop's part to confirm, invest, and consecrate within twenty days after the Royal letters patent should have come into his hands would expose him to the penalties of Praemunire. Moreover— and this alone strikes us as conclusive in regard to the purely formal quality which the Act attached to the function of confirmation—it is prescribed that in case the Dean and Chapter should defer or delay the election of the person named in the Royal letters to them for more than twelve days, the Sovereign could, by letters patent, nominate and present to the vacant office. If, thus, an entire dispensing with the ceremony of election was ex- pressly contemplated in the case of a recalcitrant Dean and Chapter, it seems inconceivable that the mere con- firmation of an election should, in the same Act—as was the argument of the opponents of Canon Gore's appoint- ment—be implicitly made dependent for its effective com- pletion upon the result of an independent inquiry, to be held, at a private instigation, by an official of the Arch- bishop's. In a word, it appears perfectly clear that to the mind of the King and of Parliament in 1533 confirmation was no more than the affixing of an authoritative seal to the process of election, and was to take place, 'to all intents and purposes, automatically. It was to be the formal completion of a proceeding in itself formal. And as such it has been treated through all these three hundred and seventy years. There has been indeed the summoning of opposers, but there has been no provision made for any hearing of them, if they presented themselves, on the merits of the appointment, and the isolated attempts made to secure that they should be so heard have failed.
All this is quite sufficiently clear and plain, and, •as we said, 'the strong and unanimous decision of the King's Bench 'Division against the conversion of the function of confirmation into a kind' of irregular trial of a -Bishop- elect, on a number of vague allegations of ecclesiastical offences, is in accord with the prevailing feeling of fair play and the fitness of things. At the same time, there is also, we are inclined to think, together with the general approval of the judgment, a certain amount of uneasiness at what seems to be the emphasis which it lays on the Era,stian aspect of the relations between Church and State. We do not refer to anything in the tone of the Judges. On the contrary, they were careful to repudiate the argu- ment, put forward by Mr. Haldane that if the confirma- tion was to be treated as a mere form, consecra- tion would, by inference, be relegated to a like position of insignificance. But, none the less, the effect of the judgment necessarily is to throw into relief the secular principle in the selection of persons for the office of Bishop, even though the mode of setting apart the individuals so selected for that office is left untouched in its sacred solemnity and significance. The election by the Dean and Chapter, and the confirmation by the Arch- bishop's Vicar-General, with its notice to opposers, if any, to present themselves, may hitherto have seemed, while no one has talked much about them, to embody, in however imperfect and rudimentary a form, the assertion of valuable principles. But now, it may be thought, this view can no longer be cherished. The judgment of the King's Bench Division has seemed to some minds to tear all veils away, and to have exhibited the Church of England as being, in regard to the vital matter of the appointment of its chief ministers and rulers, an " Act of Parliament Church," entirely subject to State authority. The poor little ceremonies which, coming 'down from pre-Reformation days, seemed to suggest at least some recognition on the part of the State of a more spiritual theory, have been mercilessly held up to the light, and shown to have no semblance of reality about them. And the strange double irony of it all is that this has happened on the occasion of the elevation to the. Episcopal Bench of a clergyman who has been one of the most prominent advocates of the right of the Church of England to greater spiritual autonomy ; while his defeated opposers,.who for the nonce have sought to avail themselves, though in vain, of the relics of days of greater ecclesiastical independence, represent bodies whose usual role is to press the authority of State Courts against the claimants of ritual liberty.
We can conceive that reflections of this character may cause pain to not a few loyal sons of the Church of England,—and perhaps some corresponding satisfaction to a good many of those who, if not rightly called her enemies, are at any rate strenuously hostile to her reten- tion of what they regard as a position of unjust privilege. As convinced supporters of the existing alliance between Church and State, we should like to suggest that from the points of view both of Church and of State the existing system in regard to the appointment of Bishops has many very important merits, and still retains in the hands of the Church an ultimate veto in case of scandalous appointments. It is even, we venture to think, very possible that, though open to many criticisms of a theoretical character, it works on the whole better than any other system that could be devised, or that would be at all likely to be set up in its place. If we look at other Churches in communion with the Church of England—the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States, the Scottish Episcopal Church, and the disestablished Church of Ireland—we find that the system of appointment of Bishops is, naturally and even necessarily, of an almost exclusively diocesan character. When an episcopal vacancy occurs the Synod or Convention of the diocese concerned, consisting of clerical and lay representatives—the latter generally bear- ing some proportion to the number of male communicants in the parishes respectively represented—is called together, and by a more or less complicated system of voting arrives at a name or names, which it sends up for approval, or selection, to the presiding Bishop or the body of Bishops, who confirm the election if they think the chosen one fit, or choose among those sent up if there are more names than one. The plan is, generally speaking, a highly correct mixture of the hierarchical and democratic elements, and we say nothing against its principles or its results. We have no reason to suppose that it fails to give general satisfaction to the members of the sister-Com- munions to the Church of England. But we venture to say with considerable confidence that, if introduced here, it is extremely doubtful whether it would work out by any means as satisfactorily as the system of appointment of Bishops which we actually possess. Quite inevitably, as it seems to us, the tendency of the diocesan election system, if we had it, would be gradually but surely to provincialise, if not to denationalise, the Church. Every one knows now how strong and natural, and within limits how right, is the feeling in any diocese in favour of the promotion to important benefices of clergymen who have worked hard in the diocese, in preference to the importation of able, but more or less unknown, outsiders. Can it be doubted that, if Bishops were all selected here as they are in the sister-Churches, the same kind of feeling would grow up here ? Especially in the more outlying dioceses, where it is of the greatest importance that the life of the Church should not become too local in its flavour, there can hardly be any question that the claims of some excellent and popular parish priest of second-rate calibre would over and over again be successful as against some man of distinction who was only known by his books and by what was read of him in the newspapers. At first, no doubt, the established tradition of bringing eminent men from a distance to fill bishoprics might isfluence the selections made. But will any one maintain that if the diocesan system had been in vogue for a generation or two we could hope at all confidently to see appointments like those of Lightfoot and Westcott to Durham, or, to speak of living prelates of different schools, of Dr. King to Lincoln, or Dr. Chavasse to Liverpool ? Or again, will any one suggest that the present venerable and distin- guished Primate, the praise of whose services to the Church is in all men's mouths, would have been elected from Rugby to the See of Exeter in 1869 ? The laity at large certainly have had no reason to complain under the present system. For the principal responsible adviser of the Crown in regard to episcopal appointments is the Prime Minister, who is dependent on the House of Commons. He is bound, however, to, and of whatever party he does, take infinite pains to inform • himself as to the best and most representative Church opinion, clerical and lay, on the subject of these appointments ; and the whole ministry of the Church is the field which he surveys in making his selection. It used at one time to be said that the present Prime Minister had an ex- tremely limited clerical acquaintance, and yet in one year of his tenure of office the Bench of Prelates has been enriched and strengthened by the selection of Dr. Ingram, Dr. Chavasse, Dr. Moule, and Canon Gore. Surely it may, be said of a system which works out thus, not only that we might go a great deal further and fare a great deal worse, but that it is doubtful whether any other plan would secure that from decade to decade the Church and • the nation should be kept in such mutually helpful and living touch. We may, therefore, as it seems to us, contemplate without apprehension or regret the recent judicial demonstration of the absolute inefficiency of the formal checks on the ordinary exercise of the episcopal patronage of the Crown, confident, however, that if any real scandal did arise public opinion would sustain a Dean and Chapter or an Archbishop, as the case might be, in using even obsolete weapons, at great apparent risk, for the protection of the Church against the abuse of secular authority.
To sum up, it seems to us that, however anomalous in theory, the present system is eminently sound in its results. The choice of the Crown is final in all ordinary cases. But if a hypothetical case is put as to some utterly unfit and profligate person being appointed, then what we now regard as but picturesque survivals, the election and the right to refuse consecration, could and would be used to meet the crisis, and it would be seen that these are more than mere forms. It is true that the Crown appoints, but the sacred right of insurrection, as it were, is most carefully provided for by the retention of these forms,—forms which, viewed in their true light, are seen to have a real use and value.
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