THE PROPOSED ANGLICAN SCHISM.
TBECommittees of the recent Episcopal Conference have been instructed to digest an elaborate and able plan for encouraging schism on a large scale in the Colonial branches of the Anglican Church, and almost as a necessary conse- quence for indirectly promoting a similar schism even in the Church at home ; but the Conference itself has, with some- what arbitrary and tardy prudence, refrained from committing itself to the recommendations of its Committees, and has indeed, as far as we see, in no single case done anything more than receive their reports, express gratitude for them, and order them to be circulated. Thus all we can say of the Episcopal Conference is that it is willing and even anxious to disseminate tentatively the prospectus for a gigantic schism ; while the majority of the members of the different Committees appointed by the Conference have declared themselves actively in favour of this organized conspiracy for schismatic pur- poses. In speaking thus we are not using rhetorical language. Our readers will admit that at present the only ecclesiastical law regutating the Anglican Church is the law declared by our own Court of Chancery, Court of Arches, and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Lord Romilly in the the recent Natal case judicially declared that the English Church in the colonies is bound by all the decisions regulating the Church at home, so far as they apply to the circumstances of the Church in the colonies, and none other. His decision came indeed in effect to this, that the Colonial Churches cannot assume a different rule of doctrine, or recognize a different final authority for determining doctrine, from the Church at home, without severing from the Church of England, and setting up as a voluntary church on a new basis of their own. In other words, if a bishop or clergyman of the colonial Church openly proposes to recognize as legally binding on him, in his episcopal or clerical capacity, principles and decisions which the tribunals of the Church of England have never affirmed, and to regard as invalid, in the same capacity, decisions which the tribunals of the Church of England have affirmed, such a bishop or clergyman would, as Lord Homily's decision is usually understood by the best legal authorities in England to assert, have separated himself from the Church of England, and be incompetent to hold any property or receive any stipend to which he was only entitled under trusts declared in favour of members of that Church. This decision of Lord Romilly's, whether legal or not, has never been appealed against, and it must therefore be accepted provisionally as the highest declaration of the- law governing our Colonial Churches until it is overruled.
Now, after this preliminary explanation of the rule to which colonial branches of the English Church are subject, it will not be very difficult to show that many of the Committees of the recent Lambeth Conference have been earnestly engaged either in declaring themselves already schismatic in sentiment, or devising plans the acceptance of which by the Colonial Churches would be ipso facto equivalent to an act of schism. Take, first, the report,—to the substance of which, as it ap- peared in an incomplete and unauthorized form, we referred two or three weeks ago,—of the Committee appointed to consider how to deliver the Church of Natal from the scandal of its present position, and to maintain the true faith there for the future. What does that committee assert I Why, first, "that the Bishop of Capetown, by virtue of his letters patent as Metropolitan, might have visited Dr. Colenso with summary jurisdiction, and might have taken out of his hands the management of the diocese of Natal,"—this in the teeth of the decision of our Courts of law,—and next, that the sentence actually passed by Dr. Gray after the mock trial at Capetown is spiritually "valid," and the see "spiritually vacant,"—again in the teeth of our Courts of law. In other words, this Com- mittee, of which the Bishop of New Zealand, now Bishop Elect of Lichfield, was chairman, asserts the authority of a tribunal not only unknown to our law, but expressly declared invalid by it, approves its sentence, founded on a number of theological principles entirely unknown to our Courts of law, and encourages the Church in Natal to set its legal Bishop at naught, and elect some new bishop to perform his func- tions. If this be not a deliberately schismatic act on the part of the majority of this Committee, and one calculated and carefully adapted to instigate to schism, we are not aware what an act of schism means.
Take next the elaborate schismatic organization prepared by the Committee of which the Bishop of Montreal was the chairman, for setting up a new " voluntary " spiritual tribunal of appeal on matters of doctrine for the various Colonial Churches. This proposed doctrinal tribunal is to consist of bishops and archbishops only ; it is suggested that each " pro- vince ' in the Colonial Church is to have the right of electing- two members of it; all the dioceses of the Colonial Church not organized into provinces would together elect two more ; each province-of the United Church of England and Ireland would be requested to elect two members; the Scotch Episcopal Church would be allowed to elect two members ; and the Episcopal Church of the United States would have the power of electing five members. All these elections are to be made only by the Bishops of the several provinces or dioceses ; any seven would form a quorum ; and the tribunal would, it is proposed, be in existence as soon as the names of ten bishops so elected had been submitted to the Archbishop of Canterbury (who is to be president) at any time after 1st January, 1869. It is proposed that no case shall be submitted to this tribunal which has- not been referred to it by some branch of the colonial church which has consented to this tribunal ; but the meaning of " consent " appears to be acceptance of its authority by a provincial synod, a body entirely without any legal autho- rity in the English Church. The new Court of appeal, ' when constituted, is to take as its standard of faith and doctrine not only the present standards in use in the United Church of England and Ireland, but also "the conclusions- which shall be hereafter agreed to at any Council or Congress of the whole Anglican Communion," provided such conclusions be not contradictory to any now existing formulary of the Church of England, and provided that the provincial synod from which the appeal on doctrinal matters comes has not refused to accept this conclusion. This tribunal, then,—itself Wholly extra-legal,—is to enforce the doctrinal "conclusions of a fortuitous concourse of episcopal atoms such as recently found their way to Lambeth, unless the province which sends up-.
the case for decision shall have expressly refused to accept these conclusions. A more elaborate machinery for diverting the authoritative doctrine of the Colonial Churches into channels running quite wide of the doctrinal decisions of our National Church cannot be conceived. It will be said, of course, that the Colonial Church need not accept the authority of this tribunal nor refer any questions to it. No doubt. But if led by such Bishops as Dr. Gray and Dr. Selwyn, the pro- vincial synods of the Colonial Church certainly will accept it, and the question is how such acceptance by a majority will act upon the fortunes of those colonial clergymen who- stand out and refuse to accept it. We, for our parts, do not doubt for a moment how, if Lord Romilly was right, such acts of submission to a foreign doctrinal standard unknown to our Courts of law would work. We believe they would virtually put all who chose to be bound by them on the new basis of a voluntary Church depending on a written contract, and not in any way part of the Church of England.
The clergymen and laymen who chose to disown this contract, this new written constitution, would remain the only colonial members of the Church of England. Those, on the other hand, who did accept the new contract, would thereby disqualify then:- selves for holding Church of England property, or receiving revenues placed in trust for members of the Church of England, and would begin a perfectly new ecclesiastical life as members of a Church only related to that of the Church of England as the Episcopal Church of the United States is related to it, and in no other way whatever. In other words, they would be schismatics. Only those who rejected the new: standards and refused the new spiritual contract would continue to have any legal connection with the English Church.
Such are the proposals directly advising and planning a schism for our Colonial Churches. They would erect a doctrinal tri- bunal of Bishops,five of them foreign bishops, to which a minority in any provincial synod might, against its own will, if this scheme could have any legal validity, be compelled to submit, —and which such minority certainly would either be compelled to respect, or to reject at the cost of excommunication by their brethren. These Committees' reports not only show an osten- tatious contempt for the legal decisions of our Ecclesiastical Courts already given, but set up a new tribunal only " volun- tary " in name,—whose authority would be in fact im- posed under giievous pains and penalties on individual clergy- men and laymen of any schismatic "province,"—with a totally new standard of doctrine, which must in a few years diverge as far from the standard of our Ecclesiastical Courts as the standard of common law in the United States has now diverged from the standard of our English common law.
But this is by no means the whole of the conspiracy for schism. Any one can see at a glance who looks over the Reports of these various Committees that they form an organic whole, and would, before many years are passed, if practically acted on, create as formidable a schism in our own Church at home as they directly advise in the Church of the colonies. One report recommends the general reorganization of the diocesan synods, and of the provincial synods over them. Over these provincial synods, again,—of which the Convoca- tions of the Provinces of York and Canterbury, but recon- stituted so as to admit lay representatives, are the only existing examples,—would be a " Congress " or "Council" of the whole Anglican Communion, of which the recent Lambeth Conference,—reconstituted so as to admit lay and clerical representatives "as consultees and advisers," but not apparently with votes,—would be the best example. This " Congress " or "Council," though not credited with autho- rity to lay down canons of doctrine of universal obli- gation, would yet, as we have shown, be empowered to give definitions of doctrine which the Colonial Court of doctrinal appeal would be generally bound to respect and abide by. Now, as the Archbishop of Canterbury would be president of this Congress or Council, and also president of the Colonial Court of appeal, and as, in both cases, he would act in conjunction with brother bishops of his own Church, it is simply impossible that the doctrines to be laid down by this highest Council or Congress of the Anglican Communion, and to be binding (in most cases) on the doctrinal tribunal of appeal, should not gain a great prestige in the national Church itself, and become very soon practical tests of orthodoxy, the rejection of which would render any Eng- lish clergyman suspected by his brethren, and lay him open to all sorts of disagreeable social disabilities and penalties. Indeed to gain this social prestige at home for the doctrinal decisions of the proposed Court of Appeal, and of the pro- posed General Council of the Anglican Communion, is obviously the chief object and intention of the whole conspiracy. That it would be successful to the extent of introducing a great schism into our Church in the colonies, and a new source of bitter division and strife into our Church at home, we do not doubt at all. Once make it a slur on a clergyman's character that he claims the liberty conceded him by our Ecclesiastical Courts, and sets at naught the decisions of the new spiritual bodies proposed in these ambitious sketches, and you will have such a series of conflicts in the Church, such a mass of heart- burnings, such tests proposed by rectors to curates, and by the proprietors of advowsons to the incumbents of their choice, as it will be utterly impossible for our Church to bear. At present it is a Church of liberty within fixed legal limits. But it is quite possible, we admit, for clerical parties to make combinations stronger than the law ; and the proposed scheme will render it simply inevitable that such parties should be formed. A powerful schismatic Church in the colonies will stimulate the High-Church and Evangelical parties at home to compete with it in boastful independence of the secular tribunals. And this is indeed exactly the end for which the leaders of the recent Congress at Lambeth are scheming. We think it very likely that they will succeed. We are sure that their success means schism on a most formidable scale. We believe that it means also the pulverization of the Church of England,—at present catholic, liberal, and great,—into small, sectarian, and narrow-minded bodies, which will wield little influence, and deserve less.
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