THE " BENNETT CASE" PANICMONGERS.

TT must be admitted that the Evangelical party have taken the

decision in the Bennett Case with considerable and even sur- prising equanimity. The Dean of Ripon (Dr. Hugh McNeile) has, of course, written to the Times to explain that though it is quite true that the doctrine of the Trinity is mysterious, there neither is nor can be anything mysterious about the Scripture doctrine of Christ's body in connection with the elements of the Eucharist, for- getting apparently that if he founds himself as he does solely on Scripture, the meaning of St. Paul's language on the subject is simply impossible to penetrate, if you are to deny him all mystical elements of thought. What are we to say of St. Paul's words,— " Wherefore, whosoever shall eat this bread and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord for he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's hotly"? He would be a rash man who was prepared to explain what St. Paul did mean in this passage, but any one may safely assert that this language is not intelligible at all without attributing to St. Paul some such genuinely mystic conceptions in his use of the phrase "the Lord's body" as those of which Dr. McNeile, though taking his stand on Scripture, sedulously denies even the possibi- lity. Again Mr. Capel Molyneux has declared in very windy language, which probably means nothing, that the Protestants of England must "look to it" that "the deadly virus" introduced by this Bennett judgment is somehow to be expelled :—" Look to it !" he says, in a burst of perorational rhetoric, "the crisis is great. Help us ! who wish to abide, who wish to cling to the Church of our fathers, and as yet the Church of God ; wish to worship still in His Courts, and still to minister to our flocks and preach the

Gospel there as heretofore. Help us to abide, and help us to cast out the accursed thing. How I know not, but somehow, anyhow, only do it. It is our duty, and never was a duty clear and positive, which, God helping, might not be done." But as Mr. Capel Molyneux seems to speak of Mr. Bennett's false doctrine only as a heresy, and to wish it cast out as an accursed thing, solely because it is heresy, we don't see how he can regard the Bennett Judgment as more dangerous than the

Judgment in the case of Essays and Reviews, where again, the existence of much that was to him a heresy, and therefore in his eyes "an accursed thing," was sanctioned expressly by the

Court. If all heresies are to be "cast out as accursed things," and all is heresy which the Evangelical clergy think so, it would be well for them to seek a Church elsewhere than in the Estab- lishment whose Courts have repeatedly and most emphatically declared that they know nothing of theological truth and false- hood as such, and are only competent to determine whether the language used by members of the Church is or is not contradictory of the language used in the dogmatic bases of the Church.

Surely Mr. Capel Molyneux would find it much easier to remove himself from "the accursed thing" than to remove "the accursed

thing" from himself ; and if his notion is that false doctrine, as he understands the word "false," defiles the Church in which it is per- mitted to remain, the only course for him seems to be to remain with it no longer, which would be much wiser than shrieking out exo- riare aliquis, and expressly intimating that this 'somebody' who is to arise, is somehow or anyhow to expel from the Church what the highest tribunal in the land declares is not to be expelled from the Church. More morally consistent than Mr. Molyneux, is Mr. G.

C. Swayne—for he at least has given up something, though ap-

parently very little—who writes to us a letter which he has also addressed to the Guardian, and which runs as follows :— PROTESTANT PRIESTHOOD.

(TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.'] Sis,—A. Church cannot really be Protestant which retains the shadow of a sacrificing priesthood. I have resigned Holy Orders, having long resolved to do so if the "Bennett" case was decided in favour of the defendant.—I am, Sir, &c., U.0. SWAINE, M.A., late Fellow of C.C.C., Oxford.

It does not appear that Mr. Swayne has either a benefice or a cure of souls to resign, but he has at least given up all he had to give up, and has separated himself from "the accursed thing," instead of entreating Heaven and Earth to separate "the accursed thing" from him. And he knows what he means, for he writes as follows to the Daily Telegraph of Thursday :— "Sre„—The Church Association are only wasting time, temper, and money in prosecuting individual Ritualists. It is like nibbling at the leaves of a noxious plant, instead of striving to pull it up. Besides, there is no harm in asstheticiam in itself, when it does not symbolise a fiction. The tap-root of so-called Ritualism is the priesthood, or third order in the Church of England, which was left sticking in it by Queen Elizabeth, to please herself. 'Priest' may be only Presbyter writ small, but it came to mean a sacrificer. There is no guarantee for Protes- tantism with a real or simulated priesthood. The Episcopate and Diaconate are Scriptural Christian institutions ; the priesthood is an importation from Judaism or Paganism, or both. Bishops and deacons can do all the real business of the Church, if empowered by law. The priesthood is either superfluous or mischievous. With a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull all together, Evangelicals, Broad-Churchmen, and Protestant Nonconformists might extirpate the priesthood, and save the Established Church, which belongs to all in common. If this is not done, and done quickly, an unseen finger will soon write on the vener- able walla, Mena, Mena, Tekel, Upharsin.'—I am, Sir, yours obediently, G. C. SWAYSE, M.A., late Fellow of C.C.C., Oxford."

But though Mr. Swayne knows what he intends, which we feel sure that neither the Dean of Ripon nor Mr. Molyneux does, it does not follow that his position is intrinsically reasonable even from his own clear anti-sacerdotal point of view. We believe we can demonstrate pretty clearly that it is not so.

In what sense is a man responsible for the errors,—wliatever the

errors may be,—which are accepted by those who belong to his own communion ? We reply, very really indeed, if those errors either are, or are universally supposed to be (for universal under- standing is the only working test of the meaning of language), included in the common doctrine, whatever that is, which consti- tutes the dogmatic basis of that communion ; but no more than he is responsible for the errors of those who belong to the same nation or the same family, if that is not the case. No doubt there are men who would think it their duty to cast off the dust from their feet, and leave England itself, if nine-tenths of Eng- lishmen became open Materialists or open Roman Catholics. They would feel as Lot did not apparently feel concerning even the sine of Sodom, that they were polluted by association with so much

and such dangerous falsehood. Nor are we at all concerned to deny that if any wide-spread doctrine could be regarded as a mere

symptom of wickedness, such a course would be in every sense justifiable. Nobody who knows himself would wish to dwell where the whole society around him is morally corrupt. And it is very possible that Mr. Molpieux may regard certain forms of heresy as mere wickedness, and may think, perhaps, that the Bennett Judgment has encouraged and in a sense ex- culpated such wickedness by declaring that it is admissible within the Church. Still we do not suppose that unless he himself were in danger of being infected with the moral evil, be would think it necessary to upbraid the Supreme Court for declaring that it was not heretical,—according to the Thirty-Nine Articles, the express law of the Church,—to justify gambling or suicide, and he would hardly leave the Church because one or two clergymen, guilty of justifying gambling or suicide, had not been expelled like " an.accursed thing." He would probably say, "The Church cannot exclude all evil doctrines, for it cannot even enumerate all evil doctrines in order to condemn them ; I must be satisfied with the spirit of my faith, which does exclude them, and I am not responsible for the moral guilt of those who think otherwise ; nor am I compelled to exact new prohibitions for any such case." But if the doctrine of a change in the sacramental elements be no more discernible in the common faith of the Church than a justi- fication for gambling or suicide, why should Mr. Molyneux be so spasmodically anxious to cast this "accursed thing" rather than that out of the Church ? Mr. Swayne will perhaps reply, "Because the sacerdotal doctrine is known to be so powerful for religious mischief, that it is the first duty of all Churches which see this mischief to make the crusade against it one of their great spiritual objects ; and it is impos- sible to proclaim a crusade with much effect against those whom your Church permits to stand on an equal level with your- selves." That is by no means an irrational position to take up. There are undoubtedly doctrines so evil and mischievous that it is every spiritual man's duty to assail them ; and it is not to be denied that you cannot assail with much advantage doctrines commonly held by your own brother clergymen, and as little condemned by the Church as is the very doctrine with which you intend to assail it. But the true reply to Mr. Swayne, if this be his position, is this: the sacerdotal doctrine loses all its power when it is not the teaching of the Church, but simply a private view just tolerated in it. Sacerdo- talism mildly asserting itself amidst a crowd of teachers who, with equal right and authority, eagerly repudiate and condemn it, is sacerdotalism shorn of all its strength. The priest, who by the exercise of his own private judgment declares himself,—often hesitatingly, apologetically, and modestly, sometimes with flourishes of trumpets and great self-assertion,—to be endowed with a mysterious divine grace by virtue of his orders, is no more the priest whom Mr. Swayne dreads, than Louis Napoleon at Chisle- hurst is the dreaded Emperor of the French. Sacerdotalism on suf - france is like a volunteer policeman who can only arrest you if you wish it yourself ; it is paralysed by the very fact that it is only one amongst many permitted theories of the clerical function. Every one sees at a glance that if sacerdotalism is anything at all, it is of the very essence of a Church, and that where it only modestly appeals to your private judgment as a possible view which the mass of Churchmen reject, it clearly can't be intellectually tenable even by a minority. Where a real priesthood exists, belief is not the ground of the priesthood, but the priesthood of belief ; you cannot believe rightly till you have been baptised and taught and confirmed by the priesthood ; and accordingly a Church in which a small section of the priesthood asserts a high theory of its own prerogative, and in which that theory is very generally rejected, is probably less likely ever to be penetrated by the sacerdotal theory, than even a Church where the sacerdotal idea had never been broached at all. There are plants which overrun and extrude all other vegetation, if they get a real footing at all, and true sacerdo- talism is one of them ; tolerated sacerdotalism is known as spurious and harmless, simply by the fact that it admits of other theories of the clerical function flourishing by its side, without gaining upon them, or showing any tendency to expel them from the soil on which it grows.