THE FEEBLENESS OF THE BISHOPS.
THE real difficulty about Episcopacy,—Protestant Episco- pacy, at all events,—is the Bishops. One would almost think that they believed themselves selected for their high office in the Church for the same reasons for which certain curiously-poised rocks,—" rocking-stones," as they are called,—are selected for a kind of adoration by cer- tain idolatrous races, because of the wonderful oscillatory and vibratory talents which they exhibit in high places. Here is the Upper House of Convocation, under the guid- ance of a man of really first-rate sense, and clearness, and purpose, Archbishop Tait, who told their Lordships most clearly what would be the result of their deferring to advise on the Athanasian Creed difficulty till they had heard the views expressed either by the public or by the Lower House of Convocation, listening to most learned harangues,—really able specimens of critical investigation,—and still abler expositions of the extreme falseness of the moral position of nine-tenths of the clergy who read the Athanasian Creed,—and coming at last to the delightfully inane conclusion,—" better wait a bit and hear what the Lower House has to say." As we understand at least one sentence in the Archbishop of Canterbury's speech, this is precisely what he thought the Bishops ought not to do, and whether he thought so or not, that is certainly what the public will think. " The best way," he said, "of avoiding undesirable discussion on this question is that we should do what seems to me the proper office of Bishops of the Church of England,—take the ques- tion into our own hands." It is true that he is reported after- wards to have said something apparently favourable to the delay till the other House had been heard, but this may have been a concession to weak brethren. It is clear that if the Archbishop, the Bishop of St. David's, the Bishop of Llandaff, and the Bishop of Peterborough had had their way, they would have advised at once that the Damnatory Clauses should be got rid of in one way or another. The Archbishop and the Bishop of St. David's would apparently have preferred getting rid of the Creed as a formulary of public worship altogether, while the Bishops of Peterborough and Llandaff preferred getting rid of the Damnatory Clauses only, but the great majority of the Bishops were so thoroughly devoted to the vibratory attitude of mind, that nothing could be done till the report of the Lower House had been received. And even this did not content the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol. He was very anxious that he should not be supposed to invite delay for the sake of delay, but his whole argument went to inviting delay, if not for the sake of delay, for the sake of getting a possible correction or two in the text of the Creed from old MSS. of it said to exist in Venice or elsewhere. After a most elaborate account of the labours of the Committee appointed to re-edit the Creed, in which he showed most successfully that the substantial diffi- culty was not touched nor likely to be touched by any conceivable feat of scholarship or research, he enlarged upon the petty alterations suggested by eminent scholars, offering a somewhat ostentatious ascription of thankfulness to God for the gain of the delay already interposed, and hoping for more gain of like kind. " I will only call attention," he said, " to this plain fact, that after the delay which, thank God !—and I thank Him thus publicly,—you were pleased to grant to me and to others, for fuller consideration not only of the subject, but of the document, many things before doubtful have become plain and clear. For instance, it is now abundantly clear that if the Creed were removed from its place in the public services, the grief that would enter into many loyal hearts would be so great, and would be so keenly felt, that they would have to consider whether it were possible to them any longer to retain their position as teachers in the Church of England." We are far from saying that one of the things " before doubtful " was that English Bishops delight in the condition of moral vibration, that they delight )tot to make up their minds on anything like a change ; but whether doubtful or not before, it is abundantly clear, from the outpourings of this one grateful episcopal heart alone,—representing, as the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol evidently does, the tone of the Upper House, that this is so now. Why, the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol is engaged in the task of collecting thoroughly irrelevant evidence, that does not bear in the least on the question before the tipper House, and thanks God for the delay afforded by that excuse in considering a reform that ought to have been given judgment on a hundred years ago at least. Consider the extreme simplicity of the case. The Bishops are divided,—honestly divided,—as to the theological value of the Athanasian Creed. But they are not divided at all as to the mischievous character of the popular meaning attached to the Damnatory Clauses. The Archbishop of Can- terbury says openly of these Damnatory Clauses, that if they ought to be interpreted,—as Bishop Magee very rightly said they ought to be,—in their plain and literal sense, " there is not a soul in this room who does take them in that sense, nobody in the Church of England takes them in their plain and literal sense," and no one contradicts him I And yet these learned and worthy old gentlemen, admitting publicly that the obvious popular mean- ing of these clauses is not accepted by a " soul in the Church of England," have not the moral courage to decide that they must be expunged or altered without waiting a little bit longer,—till the Lower House of Convocation says something, —till the new translation is out, and the library of St. Mark's at Venice has been ransacked,—till,—till,—till,—well, till they (the Bishops) have found a little nerve some- where.
Now we maintain that this extreme and fatal feebleness of the Bishops, even when well and firmly led, this love of trembling almost for its own sake, will ruin the Church, if it goes on much longer. These intellectual and moral Shakers are really guilty of a worse sort of superstition than the fanatics of the States. They all admit that they use language which in its popular interpretation is most mischievously misunder- stood whenever they utter the Creed, and for fear of something or other,—God only knows what,—they can't make up their minds to say so at once,—to tell the inferior clergy a plain bit of common-sense,—that the Creeds of the Church ought to say exactly what those who repeat them really mean, and nothing else. The Bishops make a perfect art of faltering. If they are not placed at the head for the purpose of leading, they ought not to be at the head at all. As a matter of fact, they seem to think that they are placed at the head that they may find a thousand excuses for not doing the plainest duty, and then, like the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, thank God pub- licly from their hearts for the absolutely irrelevant delay.
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