LORD GRIMTHORPE AND THE LINCOLN JUDGMENT.
WE sometimes find Protestants in relation to whom we know a great deal better what they do not believe than what they do. We often wonder that they do not substitute a nego for their credo. Their faith seems to be a mass of eager denial. They believe a little in order that they may protest much, rather than protest a little in order that they may believe much. What they dislike most is to be told that while they are at perfect liberty to think as they do, their theological foes are also at perfect liberty to think as they do, and that, too, with- out abandoning the Church to which they belong. Lord Grimthorpe is evidently one of these. He has just com- posed an address to the members of the Protestant Church- men's Alliance,—the Times of Wednesday gave us a succinct summary of it,—which appears to breathe through- out the most vehement impatience of the Archbishop of Canterbury's Lincoln judgment, and positive bitterness at the judgment of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council confirming that judgment. Nothing evidently vexes Lord Grimthorpe more than to be told that while the Pro- testant view of the Anglican Liturgy and rubrics is perfectly tenable, the high Anglican view of that Liturgy and its rubrics is also perfectly tenable ; that neither party need be condemned, though their interpretations of the rubrics are quite different. " What effect," he asked, " was the judgment to have on those who still professed the old Pro- testantism of the Church of England, and all its great authorities of three centuries ? Fortunately they were able to answer None,' for the judgment ordered no such persons to do anything they had not done, or abstain from doing anything they had done hitherto." But though Lord Grimthorpe calls this " fortunate," it is evident that any enlargement of the comprehensiveness of the Anglican Church irritates him unspeakably when it is an enlarge- ment for the benefit of his opponents. No one-can miss the note of angry irritation in the sentence : " Their his- torical conclusions" [i.e., those of the Archbishop's Court and the Court of Appeal] " might be right, and would be useful if they induced the doers of those things to declare in any way that would convince mankind of their sincerity, that they did not adulterate the wine for any reason except that they believed it was adulterated at the first Lord's Supper, or cremated candles against the sun for any reason except a symbolical one, or put themselves and their Communion-tables into fancy dresses never heard of for three centuries in this Church, except for the same reason that Rome does, which itself copied many of its ceremonies and exhibitions from its Pagan predecessors. Until they did that, his powers of reasoning did not reach the acceptance of outside excuses, which were altogether repudiated by those for whom they were made. Moreover, they might be sure that not one of the ceremonialists would have obeyed the Queen if that Court had advised her Majesty to reverse the Archbishop's judgment." We can see clearly in that sentence how intemperate Lord Grimthorpe is, and how hard put to it to find stones to throw at his assailants. What irritates him beyond measure is to find that there is to be any latitude in the interpretation of usages and ceremonials which he had always been accustomed to denounce as purely superstitious and papal. He would have been happier, apparently, if these ceremonials had been even sustained in what he thought their most objection- able sense, than he is at their being shown to be by no means necessarily identified with that objectionable sense. It is the comprehensiveness of the Church which he objects to, even more than its Ritualism. He would have known what to say, and how to get up a formidable agitation, if Romanising practices had been approved, precisely because they were Romanising ; but that they should be shown to be susceptible of several different meanings,—some of them not in the least identi- fied with a Romanising interpretation,—angers him beyond bearing. That cuts away the ground from under the feet of the rampant Protestants. And yet, what is the real place of the Anglican Church in the world, if it is not to be in the true sense comprehen- sive, both of those who take a high sacramental view of the theology of the Church, and of those who cannot and do not take such a view ? The historical meaning of the English Reformation was a national revolt against government by a foreign Bishop who did not appre- ciate the scandal of the abuses which had corrupted it. And its main object' was that Lutherans, and even semi-Calvinists, were to be made room for in the Church, without offence, or with as little offence as pos- sible, to the moderate Catholics. Its chief purpose was to purify the Church from the consequences of selfish and greedy and unspiritual government, and to admit freely certain moderate reformers who did not believe in the infallibility of the Church, but did believe that thinkers of different tendencies, so long as they were agreed in wishing for truth and for reforms, and were honestly striving to find the right reforms, might be induced to co-operate. Well, if that was the explanation of the first reform in the Liturgy and the rubrics, which aimed at keeping so much that the severer Puritans condemned, and yet at admitting so much that the Roman Catholics condemned, is there anything in the present state of the world and the Church that should alter that line of policy ? As it seems to us, there is everything to confirm it. This is an age of even greater uncertainty as to the exact scope of primitive Christianity than the sixteenth century. Criticism has made considerable strides with very mixed results,—most remarkable results in con- firming the objection to anything like infallibility,— very doubtful results as regards the early predomi- nance of either the sacramental, or what is called the evan- gelical view, in the primitive Church. A great movement has taken place in all Christian lands towards the revival of the sacramental doctrines of the Church, as well as a great movement against the rather narrow sacerdotalism of the age which provoked the Reformation. The free criticism of the Bible has stimulated both movements, and while there is more sympathy than ever, even amongst laymen, with the sacramentalism of Keble, there is also more sympathy than ever with the protest against the sacer- dotalism of Laud. We do not say that these two tendencies are by any means perfectly consistent. Every one knows that they are not. But it is perfectly true, nevertheless, that both exist, and that both are cherished by minds of the noblest, and also humblest type of Christian reverence. There is more practical belief than ever in the reality and the mystery of revelation. There is more practical difficulty than ever in defining where superstition begins and where the legitimate rationalism of criticism ends. At such a time as this, the English Church may well be on her guard against giving a triumph to any one of the three schools,— the sacramental, the evangelical, the latitudinarian,—which are so curiously interwoven in her Communion. It would, in our opinion, be an act of madness to narrow the compre- hension of the Church in such an age as this. Our Church is not, and never can be, a Church expressing belief of a single type. It is, as it always was, a refuge for those who can find no clear and final authority on some of the doctrines im- plied in the Christian revelation, but who regard Christianity as the only adequate and final assurance which man has re- ceived of the divine passion for our salvation. The Church of England has always been, and will always continue to be, the asylum of those who are more or less uncertain as to the limits of revelation, and who hold that while God has re- vealed much, he has not found in man the capacity to under- stand equally in all cases all that he has revealed, and has therefore allowed us to remain in doubt as to some of the most grave of the problems arising out of revelation. Why, in an age when these doubts are so clearly marked, anybody should be so anxious as is Lord Grimthorpe to cmcentrate his energy in proclaiming his disbeliefs, and not his beliefs, it passes our power to understand. If the Anglican Church is not to be comprehensive, it might as well throw up its position altogether, and dismiss its members either to the infallibilists on the one hand, or to the various sects on the other.
Previous page
