The Reunion of Christendom
V.—The South Indian Proposals and the Church of England
[Dr. Sparrow Simpson, who contributes this article, is a distin- guished Anglo-Catholic scholar and divine.—En. Spectator.] THE keen anxiety of South Indian Communions to reunite deserves the sympathy of all Christians. That Congregationalists and Methodists and Presby- terians should consent that in the Church of the Future all ministries shall be by episcopal ordination is one of the memorable decisions of our time. Assuming a real agreement to exist between the separate Com- munions on the foundation of the Faith represented in the Nicene Creed, they are prepared to accept the historic episcopate, without intending thereby to imply or to expresS a judgment on, or any theory concerning, episcopacy. All future ordinations are to be episcopal. But, during the interval, estimated at thirty years, all ministers of the uniting Churches, whether Presbyterian or Congregationalist, are to be acknowledged as ministers of the Word and of the Sacraments in the United Church, and authorized, as well as the episcopally ordained, to celebrate the Holy Communion. It is true that a pledge is given that in the United Church no arrangements will be made which would offend the conscientious convictions of any persons concerned ; but many of the Anglican congregations in India, having been educated under strongly Protestant direction, would probably be quite willing to admit ministers of the Wesleyan or Congregationalist bodies to celebrate Holy Com- munion for them, so that this proviso, however reasonable it may appear, is completely inadequate. It is one thing to make the type of minister a matter of local option ; it is a very different thing to say that during the interirri period no inter-celebration shall occur.
My purpose is to consider the bearing of this proposal on the Church of England. No quality of the English 'hureh has been more emphasized of recent years than its inclusiveness. It has shown conspicuous reluctance to dogmatize. It leaves many matters designedly undefined. Hence its capacity to retain within its precincts men of various schools of thought. But the inclusiveness of the Church of England has its limits. For this Church insists on retention of the dogmas of the ancient Creed. Insists also on retention of the ancient constitution and ministry. In fact, with regard to the ministry the attitude of the Church of England is exclusive. That has been the constant complaint of the non-episcopal Communities. And that criticism is perfectly just. It may sound a paradox, but it is true that this comprehensive Church is in some respects peculiarly exclusive.
The preface to the English Ordinal declares first that the Episcopal order of ministry has existed continuously from the Apostolic age ; secondly, that it was evermore held in such revered estimation that no one was allowed to discharge ministerial functions without it ; thirdly, that it is the intention of the Church of England that this ministry should be continued, and that no man shall be allowed to exercise any of the ministerial functions pless he has received episcopal ordination. That is undeniably exclusive.
And there is no question that this is the impression Which the Church of'England has made on its observers. Did space allow, this would be quite easy to prove.
But at the same time, while the Church of England has very positively pronounced its deliberate deter- Mination to maintain' a ministry which is exclusively episcopal, it has quite characteristically refrained from pronouncing any opinion whatever on the authority of non-episcopal ministers to consecrate the Eucharist.
The English Church has included among its adherent, persons who held different interpretatiorfs with regard to the essentials required to authorize a man to celebrate the Blessed Sacrament. One section has held that an episcopally ordained minister—in other words, a priest—. is indispensable for the due ministration of Christ's Ordinance. Another section has held that episcopal ordination is the local English rule, but not the only way in which the Sacrament can be rightfully celebrated.
Both these schools of thought have believed their theories justified by the Anglican formularies. The Evangelical could say that the English Church has never denied the right of ministers who are not priests to celebrate the Sacrament in non-episcopal communities. Which is true. The Anglo-Catholic could say that the English Church in its Authorized Regulations has pronounced exclusively for the Catholic tradition : which is also true.
This exclusive insistence on episcopal ordination combined with refusal to pronounce any opinion on non- episcopal ministries has been, and is, a marked charae- teristic of the English Church. But now consider the bearing of the South Indian proposals on this attitude a the Church of England.
It is proposed that the Indian Church of the future shall accept the Episcopate without expressing 61 implying any theory concerning episcopacy. Taken by itself that proposal is perfectly clear. But then it also proposed that ministers of the uniting Churches, whether priests or not, shall be acknowledged as minister's of the Word and the Sacraments, and shall be authorized to celebrate the Holy Communion in the united Church. hat also taken by itself is perfectly clear. But hcriir these two propositions can be reconciled is not clear for plainly if ministers not episcopally ordained are authorized to celebrate the Eucharist within the same Church as the episcopally ordained, it is not true to say that no theory concerning episcopacy is expressed or implied. To allow men who are not priests to conse'- crate' the Sacrament in the same Church with those who are is to imply a very definite theory concerning the values of both. It deliberately makes the ministei equivalent to the priest. If the Church of England consented to this combination, it would thereby have committed itself officially and dogmatically to the Protestant conception as against the Catholic. And, therefore, an official pronouncement of this kind would reverse the attitude to which the Church of England has adhered for centuries.
The gravity of such a reversal of conceptions, were it enacted, is unmistakable. One reason why the Church of England has been able to retain Catholics within its fold is precisely because it has nowhere committed itself to the theory that any other ordination is equivalent to that conferred by the Episcopate. If the Church of England were to insist on committing itself to the Pro- testant conception it would render dangerously insectift the loyalty of a very large section of its own members: It would incur the risk of a very serious secession. The fact is that it is deeply ingrained in the convictions of a considerable section of English Church people, who are by no means extreme, that a priest is required to conse- crate the Eucharist. And they could not be induced to participate in a Eucharist unless so consecrated. This is a long-standing tradition which they would not std.. render. This view is shared by a number of thetishopa. It is held by a very large number of the inferior eler6. They sought and accepted ordination from the Episcopate of the English Church because they were convinced that they simply dared not celebrate the Sacrament without that commission and that authority. I have been myself for forty years a priest, and I believe I say what thousands of other clergy of the English Church would endorse, in saying that we knelt to receive that awfully solemn commission because we believed that it was the Church's intention to confer the ancient ministry in the ancient meaning. We believed, as our Archbishops told Pope Leo XIII., that our Fathers retained the ancient ministry in the sense in which it had been up to the time of the Reformation in use. What I submit is simply that these are facts. They are facts which to another school are most regrettable. None the less they are facts. There are numbers of priests who have given their best years to the service of the English Church on that under- standing. Were it otherwise they would not be here. And there is an unhappy misgiving haunting some of them, whether they will be allowed to end their days within the English Church. The incredible advice which some of them have received to join the Church of Rome is one which no qualified theologian could ever have given. The inconsistencies of the English Church do not demonstrate the rightfulness of the papal claims. What they complain of is that hitherto the ministerial prin- ciples of the Church of England are essentially Catholic, but if this Indian proposal were accepted its ministerial principles would become essentially Protestant. Thus the historic character of the English Church would be fundamentally changed, by the introduction of a theory about the ministry to which that Church has never yet been officially committed. The formidable difficulty which the Anglo-Catholic experiences in this mingling of ministries is one which will be felt in every episcopal Communion which takes its own traditional adherence to priesthood seriously. The utterances of Eastern theologians at Lausanne are only an illustration of the fact that the ancient Churches will not allow the authority of any man to consecrate the Eucharist if he is not a priest. When advocates of the South India scheme defend it on the ground that the irregularity of contrasted ministries would only exist for thirty years, and would afterwards be cancelled by the unity which is to be ultimately attained, they fail to realize the gravity of the proposal. It is not a question of duration, but of intrinsic rightness. The difficulty is not whether it should happen often, but whether it should happen at all. In the Church Congress Bishop Gore said* :— " . . the Anglican Communion would certainly be rent in
twain on the day on which any non-episcopally ordained minister was formally allowed within our Communion to celebrate the Eucharist : and any Colonial Church of our Communion which recognized in this way the validity of non-episcopal orders, would either be disowned by other parts of the Anglican Communion, or, if that were not the case, would cause what I have just described as the division within our Communion at home."
On this pronouncement by Bishop Gore, Professor Sanday made the following reflections-I. :— " I cannot pretend to minimize the shock with which this pro- noxmcement, when I saw it in print, came to me as it must have done to many others, and still more to those who heard it. . . But at the same time I should wish to recognize heartily the courage and resolute facing of facts which prompted the utterance, ana to endorse the Bishop's belief that as a statement of fact what he said is strictly and literally true."
[We have already published in this series an introductory article by the Rev. A. S. Duncan-Jones, "The Anglican Position" by the Bishop of Middleton, "The Orthodox Point of View" by Archbishop Clermanos of Thyateim, "Reunion and the South Indian Scheme" by the Rev. J. Scott Lidgett and "The Roman Catholic Point of View" by Rev. Leslie J. Walker. _ Next week we shall publish an article on "The Reunion of the Scottish Churches," by the Rt. Hon. Lord Sande.
—En. Spectator.] - • Report, p. 115. - Smy:' The Primitive Church and Re-union, 1913,-p. 30.
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