THE LAMBETH .AN.AROHISTS.
A RCHI3ISHOP TRENCH, Bishop Sumner (of Winchester), 11. Bishop Browne (of Ely), Bishop Ellicott (of Gloucester and Bristol), and Bishop Selwyn (Bishop Designate of Lichfield) are all in favour of breaking up the Church of England,—or at least have done their little possible, and we only hope it may prove little,—in that direction. These gentlemen were on a Committee of the Lambeth Conference appointed to con- sider the best mode of abating the Natal "scandal," and of "maintaining the true faith.' They have all signed,—so say the Standard and Herald, which alone contain any notice, and they only a miserably poor one, of the secret proceedings taken last Tuesday by the adjourned Conference at Lambeth,—a Report full of moral inconsistency, and yet most happily calcu- lated to sow the seeds of the Church's ruin. The moral incon- sistency of the Report is shown by the contempt for legal decisions which one part of it encourages, and the longing to get a legal decision on the side of the Committee which another part of it discloses. Its real effect on the mind of all who read it is equivalent to this,—' We respect the decisions of the English Ecclesiastical Courts when they are in our favour, and, indeed, think them, then, of so much importance that it is worth our while to move heaven and earth to get them to declare in our favour ; but when they are against us, we simply ignore them, and declare them spiritually invalid.' For what do these most reverend or right reverend persons actually say ? Why, they declare, first, that they accept the "spiritual validity" of the sentence of deposition passed by the Bishop of Cape Town on the Bishop of Natal, and regard the see as "spiritually vacant." Now, as the 'highest English Ecclesiastical Court has decided that the sentence of deposition is utterly invalid, and Lord Romilly has since laid down the principle that the law of the Church of England is the only law by which the Church in the Colonies can be guided,—a principle which scatters to the winds almost every assumption by which Dr. Gray was guided in his mock trial of Dr. Colenso,—the whole tendency of this opinion of our English prelates is to set at naught the authority of the law, and gut the authority of wholly extra-judicial bodies, —bodies not only extra-judicial, but even so polemical as to be destitute of the faculty of judgment,—like Convocation and the Lambeth Synod, above the law. They very irrelevantly recite that in 1863 forty-one -English Bishops urged Dr. Colenso to resign his bishopric,—they might as well recite that forty-one Esquirnaux had done the same thing, for any bearing it has on either the spiritual or legal validity of the sentence passed. They go on to say that the Province of Canterbury "condemned" some of his publications,—condemnation by the Province of Canterbury meaning just as much and as little as condemnation by the Oxford Union Debating Society. Then, Dr. Gray, as Dr. Colenso's Metropolitan, cited him, and the Committee declare that, if he had liked, Dr. Gray "might, by virtue of his letters patent as Metropolitan, have visited Dr. Colenso with summary jurisdiction, and taken out of his hands the management of the diocese of Natal,"—and this, though they know that the Judicial Committee have decided that the letters patent of the Metropolitan give him no authority at all,—and even if they had been valid, no judge has ever yet laid down what authority they would have given. A more flagrant disregard of law was never shown by men one of whose first duties it is to obeythe law themselves, and to teach respect for it to others. Then, again, these gentlemen recite that the proceed- ings of the African Church were approved by the Convocations of Canterbury and York, by the General Convocation of the Episcopal Church in the United States, by the Episcopal Synod of the Church of Scotland, by the Spiritual Synod of Canada, and by fifty-six Bishops of the Lambeth Conference. We do not know in what terms this approbation was expressed,—in the case of the Convocation of Canterbury it was certainly very ambiguous, as it expressly refused to excommunicate Dr. Colenso,—and we do not care to know. These votes had no more validity,—legal or spiritual,—than a vote of the Church Missionary Society, or any other association of clergymen bent on asserting a private opinion of their own. What deference is due to fifty-six united episcopal opinions ? Rather less, we fear, in the present condition of the Church, than to a good many other groups of fifty-six persons we could select,—of mixed clergy and laity. If this is all this new Episcopal commit- tee of public safety can quote by way of showing the "spiritual validity" of Dr. Gray's sentence, they might just as well have left the matter alone altogether. Against personal authority on one side, the personal authorities on the other should, in common fairness, be cited, and the relative worth of the con- flicting judgments estimated. As it is, these dignified friends of revolution have done their best to undermine the respect attaching to the ecclesiastical law of England on the strength of a lot of clerical ipse-dixits, of no earthly value beyond that attaching to the individual opinions of the persons pro- nouncing them.
And yet, though these Episcopal anarchists show not the smallest respect for what the Privy Council and the Master of the Rolls have declared already, they are exceedingly eager to get the law on their side for the future. And for that not only we do not reproach them, but should even account their wish laudable, if there were the least indica- tion of any intention to respect the spirit of the law in case it goes against them. But these respectable, but illogical, fathers in God do not pretend to appeal to the law as an authority which may decide either in their favour or against them. On the contrary, they distinctly tell the judges to whom they appeal what they must say, and give no sign of intending obedience unless they do say what is dictated. "We con- sider it of the utmost importance,"—this is the language attributed by the Standard to these Episcopal incendiaries,— " for removing the existing scandal from the English Com- munion, that there should be pronounced by some competent English Court such a legal sentence on the errors of the said Dr. Colenso, as would warrant the Colonial Bishoprics' Council in ceasing to pay his stipend, and would justify an appeal to the Crown to cancel his letters patent." In other words, the Bishops think it exceedingly desirable not that the law should be properly laid down by the best judges, and the result made known,—but that the law should decide for them, and against their opponent. They don't want the true law, be it for them, or be it against them. They want the decision of the law on their side. If it be against them, they will say it is "spiritually invalid," and raise a hue and cry against it. A circle of consecrated dogmatists, having made up their own minds what law they would like to have over them, declare it highly expedient that the existing law should coincide with that law ; but if it does not, then so much the worse for the existing law. They are prepared to assert it to be of moral weight and validity only if it be identical with their present opinions. These Bishops are just like the Fenians. If the law is on their side, nothing can equal the importance they attach to it, and the deference it deserves. If it is against them, they owe it nothing but hostile demonstrations and the most passionate anathemas.
Now, what must be the result of this new policy of laying down what is and is not "spiritually valid" by clerical private judgment, and respecting the actual ecclesiastical law only so far as it agrees with this internal criterion? Of course, the effect will be to break up the true liberty of the Church altogether. Convocation and the other respectable assemblies named, and a certain number of Bishops, even 42 or 56, could in all probability be found to denounce Mr. Gorham's doc- trine on baptism as a gross heresy, and will assuredly be found doing so some day, if this imperium in imperio be allowed to gain head, and to impose its "spiritual validity" on the con- sciences of the Church. Indeed, one resolution submitted to a Committee by the recent Lambeth Synod, and reported upon last Tuesday, though we know not to what effect, expressly con- templatedahierarchical system of spiritual tribunals, the highest of which should virtually determine on appeal the doctrine of the English Church. If once any important part of the Church agrees to bind itself by such tribunals the whole structure must split up, for it is absolutely impossible that such a tribunal should not soon be put in motion against some one of the great parties in the Church,—probably, as the Bishop of Argyll predicts, the Evangelicals, or quite as pro- bably, the Broad Church, — the result of which would be that, if the party condemned accepted the decision, it would be exiled, and if it resisted it, it would be excommunicated, from the Church. This is not the sort of discipline to which the Clergy of the Church of England have been used. It is all very well for Romanists to obey the infallible oracles of the Pope,—which are indeed but seldom given on new points of doctrine. They have been trained for generations to bend to this authority. But ours is a stiffnecked priesthood. Archdeacon Denison himself would be the first to defy a tribunal which ruled his own favourite theology wrong. The Evangelicals would bridle and kick at the first fret of the rein. The Puseyites would rear and snort at the bare idea of their doctrine of antiquity being overruled. The Broad Churchmen would take the first fence set up in their way, and get the bit fairly in their teeth. It is only while the line and cry is against a single defenceless in- dividual, like the injudicious Colenso, that it would have a possible chance of success. Even these bishops would not dare to apply their new tribunal of the Inquisition to the Dean of Westminster, who on nanny points possibly goes quite as far as the unhappy Colonial Bishop. If Dr. Trench and Dr. Harold Browne and the rest of them have their way, they will get the thin edge of the wedge into the central timbers of the Church. And before long, these respectable but short-sighted prelates will stand aghast at their own work, when they find themselves unable to arrest the blows by which the thick end will be driven in after the thin, and the whole structure rent in twain. St. James, who certainly had a bitter experience of Conferences, aptly observed that the tongue is an unruly member. He thought the poison oozing from the serpent's tooth not com- parable in deadliness to that secreted by busy tongues. He must have been thinking of the difficulty he had in bringing the Conference of Jerusalem to reason,—even with the aid of a powerful Apostolic Committee, — when he said, "Every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the sea is tamed, or hath been tamed, of mankind ; but the tongue can no man tame ; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. Therewith bless we God, even the Father, and there- with curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God,"—this last the very object, we may safely say, for which the Lambeth Conference was convened. St. James knew too well what ecclesiastical synods were like. He at least would certainly have said, with Dr. Ewing in his admirable remarks on the recent Conference, that "there is no security against error except manifestation of the truth, and it is only by making error of obligation that it becomes dangerous,—and this we too often do by human definitions."
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