LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
MR. MAURICE AND ECCLESIASTICISM.
[TO THE EDITOE 01 TEl "SPECTATOR-1
STH,—Mr. Oakley and Mr. Sarson, in whose eyes the Ritualists are a persecuted minority, representing spiritual conviction and energy in conflict with the secular power, invoke Mr. Maurice's authority against any disciples of his who refuse their sympathy to the cause of spiritual freedom. They have a right to be sur- prised that any one who reverences Mr. Maurice's memory and teaching should be found on the side of the oppressor. It is cer- tain that Mr. Maurice would have thrown himself eagerly into the defence of those who seemed to him to be persecuted by a tyran- nical majority, and it is certain also that it was one of his chief objects to rouse men to a recognition of the reality and the might of spiritual forces.
My answer to the reproaches of my too kind friends is that I cannot regard the Ritualists as suffering persecution. I hope I am not in favour of denying them justice and fair-play. But the minority in a conflict do not always deserve the sympathy of the lovers of freedom. I cannot but feel touched indeed by the generous enthusiasm on behalf of the Ritualists shown by Mr. Sarson, who knows much more of them than I do. He thinks they are misjudged and slandered. Mr. Oakley suggests that if I were to see the Communion Service at a Ritualist church, I should be much impressed by it. I have no reason, however, to suppose that a nearer acquaintance with the ritual and other peculiarities of this party would alter my esti- mate of them. The Ritualist Confessional, since " The Priest in Absolution " has partly withdrawn the veil from it, is more dis- tasteful to most of us than it was before. It seems to me that the Ritualist movement, in its theology, its devotions, its policy, its polemics, is to a great extent such as St. Paul would have characterised as carnal. That there is much good mixed with the evil in it, I do not for a moment doubt ; but its conceptions of Christ and his presence, its appeal to the senses and the nerves rather than the conscience, its party spirit, the contentions which it is so ready to breed in the Church, savour of the flesh more than of the spirit. And the present resolve of the Ritualists to convulse and split the Church for the sake of a chasuble, and the eagerness of so many of the clergy to obtain a legislative Synod that may lay down rules and define dogmas, would have been regarded by Mr. Maurice, I feel certain, with no sympathy at all, but with the profoundest sorrow and alarm.
Mr. Oakley quotes a highly characteristic passage in which Mr. Maurice condemns alike "the disposition of Churchmen to make the Church into a powerful State, and of statesmen to make them- selves dictators of the Church." "Regarding," he says, " with intense horror the ecclesistical tyranny creeping in upon us under this name of religious liberty, I regard also with extreme dislike the Erastian doctrines which are creating a reaction in favour of it." Mr. Maurice was thinking, as usual, not so much of consti- tutional arrangements as of spiritual tendencies. The Erastian doctrines which he disliked were those which justified statesmen in making themselves dictators of the Church, and such a policy implied that worldly expediency was to rule over spiritual convic- tions, and to suppress them when they were inconvenient. But if this policy was regarded by him with " extreme dislike," the ecclesiastical tyranny which he saw creeping in upon us excited his " intense horror." In " The Kingdom of Christ " he speaks of a disposition which might arise in a Church to make much of a power of legislating, and to take pride in issuing rules and decrees :—" Supposing such a tone of mind to become prevalent, I can conceive of no greater mercy than that the civil power should step in, to put a stop to clerical convocations and to discourage provincial synods." (Vol. H., p. 408.) Now it seems to me that this spirit is just that which is moving in the anti-civil agitation of the day. No one has a better right to speak in the name of the advanced High-Church party than Canon Carter. And what is it that he complains of, what that he desires ? "Instead of Convocation watching the course of things, and recognised as the legitimate legislative Chamber, constantly in action, re- ceiving appeals, and judging books, &c., we have a Convocation which, after a long suppression and great discouragements, is. slowly struggling into life, and without any real recognition by the State. Instead of commissions of Bishops and Convocation dogmatically defining the distinctions and lines of doctrine, we have a series of judgments of the Supreme Court which have shaken the Church to its very foundations, and jeopardised its claims to be a teacher of truth." (Nineteenth Century, May, p. 427.) There we have the ecclesiastical ideal,—a synodical body con- stantly at work, receiving appeals, judging books, dogmatically defining the distinctions and lines of doctrine, taking care that there shall be no laxity on such subjects as the Atonement, baptismal regeneration, the inspiration of Scripture, and future punishment That is the sort of work which Mr. Maurice thought it a good thing that the civil power should step in to- put a stop to.
What symptoms are there at present of a disposition on the part of statesmen to make themselves dictators of the Church ? Is the Public Worship Act such a symptom ? That was a modi- fication of procedure asked for by the Bishops, with the concur- rence of the immense majority of Churchmen, in order that their legitimate episcopal authority might not be set at defiance. Some language indeed was used in the House of Commons on both sides of the House, when this Act was under discussion, in which Mr.. Maurice would have discerned, I think, the Erastian spirit which. he condemned. But there was little of this, and that little had the excuse of considerable provocation. On the other hand, we see a revival of ecclesiastical pretensions, threatening a tyranny which Mr. Maurice regarded with intense horror,—a tyranny the- more dangerous because it is disguised under the form of liberty,. the more enslaving because it makes the religious instinct its- ally and instrument. The principle proclaimed by this movement is one which Mr. Maurice was never tired of denouncing,—that of the separation of the spiritual and the civil spheres of life. To. one who has learnt in his school, the cardinal assertion of the- Ritualists, that God and the Civil Power have their distinct pro- vinces, is preposterous as a piece of exegesis, utterly unsound in. theology, and most fruitful of mischief in application to practice._
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