THE LAITY .AND THE JUDGMENT IN " JENKINS v. COOK."
THERE will be many inclined to regret that the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, in giving judgment in the case of "Jenkins v. Cook," did not go out of their way to decide points which, in the estimation of the Judges, were not really raised in that case, and on which, therefore, the law of the case did not, in their opinion, properly turn. Now, it would be well for such persons to remember that if the Judicial Committee had decided the point which, in their opinion, was not involved in the case as it stood, whether a layman who openly rejects the personality of the Devil and the everlasting punishment of the wicked is or is not entitled to receive the Communion at the hands of his parish clergyman, they could not have decided,—at least not in the same sense,—the point, which is not less important for all laymen, whether a clergyman has or has not any business to impute " constructive " heresies to a layman, or to set him down as a "common and notori- ous depraver" of the Book of Common Prayer and its formu- laries, because that layman has done something which is, in his clergyman's opinion, best accounted for as resulting from disbelief of any Church doctrine ; and still less could they have decided in the same sense whether or not it is right to punish him for the admissions of a letter extracted from him by the invitation of the clergyman himself, in the way of apology for his supposed heresies or shortcomings in orthodox professions. It is admitted that doctrines laid down by a Court of Law, which, in the opinion of that Court, are not really those on which the particular case turns, are not of any great weight for the guidance of future Judges. It is only on points on which the full official responsibility of the Judge is exercised, that his decision enters into the very tex- ture of the law of the future. Now clearly, in this case of "Jenkins v. Cook," it was quite impossible for the full judicial responsibility of the Court to be exercised on both the points to which we have referred, unless the first point had been decided against the appellant. If the Judicial Committee had held that the final issue to be decided was the maximum deviation from orthodox standards (on the particular points of doctrine supposed to be involved) that was compatible with the right to receive the Communion, they must have ruled Mr. Jenkins's disbelief in these respects to be indisputable, and assumed that his refusal to assent to Mr. Cook's re- quisition was sufficient proof of that disbelief. Obviously, unless Mr. Jenkins had been shown to have identified him- self " notoriously " with questionable doctrine, any decision of the final point would have been a mere °biter dictum, and not an exercise of the full judicial responsibility of the tribunal. This being admitted, can any one doubt that a most important and effective safeguard of our laymen's privileges would have been recklessly sacrificed, if the Court of Appeal had weakly assumed that Mr. Jenkins's letter inti- mating disapproval of a certain sermon of Mr. Flavel Cook's —a sermon whose contents were unknown to the Court, or if known to any one except Mr. Cook and Mr. Jenkins, known only by vague rumour — his extracts from the Bible for the purpose of family prayer, or rather, his omission from those extracts of passages which were "con- spicuous by their absence,"—and his correspondence both spontaneous and invited, with his Vicar, were adequate proofs that he was an "open and notorious depraver" of the Book of Common Prayer and its formularies, which is the only canonical justification for refusing him Communion? Yet this must have been assumed by the Court, before it could have gone on to pronounce any responsible judgment on the doctrinal point, which is now left, under the actual judgment delivered, as uncertain as it was before. We hold, then, that whatever dis- appointment the public may feel at not getting the decision of this point from the Court, we could only have had such a decision delivered with any authority at the cost of a judgment most adverse to the privileges of lay members of the Church, on a matter of quite as great, if not of still greater, importance. If Mr. Jenkins had publicly pronounced and deliberately adopted before the world the views inferentially imputed to him by his Vicar, it would, no doubt, have been a matter of still greater interest to hear the judgment of the Court of Appeal on the relation of these avowals to the right of the layman making them to Communion. But that was not the case. Mr. Jenkins acted throughout with a certain degree of reticence. He intimated clearly enough disapproval of some dogmas, views, or interpretations of Scripture, an- nounced by his Vicar, but he did not define what it was he thus vehemently disapproved. He intimated clearly enough that there were passages in Scripture which, "in their generally- received sense," he thought " quite incompatible with religion or decency;" but he did not specify which those passages were, nor did he explain what was that "generally-received sense" which he characterised as "quite incompatible with religion or decency."
Now, however interesting it would have been to get .a decision of the larger point which has been left undecided, it is certain that in preserving this indefiniteness of position, and in refusing to expound more clearly what he did think,—very possibly, from inability to define his exact views on the subjects involved,—Mr. Jenkins was a far better representative of the average layman than he would have been if he had distinctly avowed, and therefore of course distinctly understood, his own shade of theological belief. The great majority of English laymen,—even of educated English laymen,—live in a state of hesitation as to many theological dogmas, and of complete in- ability to form an opinion on others. Sometimes, like Mr. Jenkins, they will take up a very decided view that a par- ticular doctrine urged upon them from the pulpit is all wrong. They are jarred by it as the clergyman expounds it, and though they do not see their way to explain away "the texts" with which he supports it, and might shrink from saying, with Mr. Jenkins, that, as interpreted, they are quite " incompatible with religion or decency," their state of feeling is often closely akin to his, though if called upon to state their conviction on the subject, they might find it very hard to do so, and feel that they must decline the task. Now, this being the state of mind in which a vast number of Churchmen, and of sincerely Christian Churchmen, live as to a considerable number of points on which either the Articles or the other formularies of the Church teach a most definite and elaborate view, can any one doubt that a vastly greater advantage will result to them from the decision of the Court against the right of the Clergy to impute " constructive " heresies, than would have resulted from any decision, whatever way it might have been, on the liberty of doctrine itself. The truth is, that in relation to theology, the lay mind is in a state of fermentation. A great many of us do not know precisely what we do and what we do not hold on many heads. On others, we know what we reject, but not what we are to substitute for the doctrine rejected. The one thing which is clearly undesirable, is to have to define our position before it is naturally made clear to us. And the one course which is most dangerous and injurious, not only to the persons whose position would be affected by that course, but to the Church itself, would be to cut off hesitating and perplexed laymen from the devotional life of the Church, while they remain thus in hesitation or doubt, as the penalty of that hesitation or doubt. Now the judgment in the appeal of "Jenkins v. Cook" decides this point, and decides it in favour of the laymen. They are not to be cut off from any part of the devotional life of the Church on the strength of construc- tive heresies imputed to them by the clergy. They may be repelled from communion if they be "open and notorious evil lives," i.e., openly and notoriously immoral, so that admitting them to communion may cause a scandal to the Church ; and further, they may be repelled if they are "common and notorious depravers" of the Book of Common Prayer, and the orders and rites therein contained, but " depravers " is decided to mean something more even than rejectors of anything in that Book, and must denote persons who 'revile,' despise, or mock at what it contains. But as far as this judgment goes, these are the only grounds on which laymen may be lawfully repelled from communion. Though, therefore, the Judicial Com- mittee decline to decide whether a layman of the English Church could, consistently with remaining a member of that Church, profess the views concerning Satan and concerning eternal punishments hastily attributed by Sir R. Phillimore in the Court of Arches to Mr. Jenkins, and though they emphatically declare that they have not been called upon to consider this point and do not decide it, they do decide a point which -eeems to us, if superficially less interesting, practically far mole important to English Churchmen. They deny the right of the Clergy to find excuses in their own hypothetical interpretation of the actions and writings of their parishioners, for excom- municating them. They secure the right of laymen to remain unmolested in the enjoyment of all the devotional privileges of the Church, so long as they themselves value those privileges and find them of spiritual benefit, even though they may have candidly avowed doubts and difficulties on various doctrinal subjects. The Clergy are told that they have no right to construe such doubts and difficulties into positive heresies, still less to magnify even disbelief into blasphemy or "reviling." They must not even reject evil livers" from com- munion, if after due warning they persist in offering them- selves, unless these evil livers be "notorious evil livers" and thereby a cause of offence to others. They must not exercise their responsibility to reject even heretics who are still members of the Church from communion, unless they are "common and notorious depravers," i.e., revilers, of the Book of Common Prayer. They are not to be judges of the consciences of their parishioners. The very limited right given them to excommunicate is given not apparently for the sake of the per- son excommunicated, but for the sake of others to whom offence mightbe given by the notion that they were participating in a most sacred rite with persons who felt no proper reverence for that rite. Surely this is a far more practical and important limita- tion of the power of the clergy to judge the laity, than any decision on the point of doctrine would itself have involved. Indeed, as we could not have had such a decision without a preliminary decision which would more or less have justified Mr. Cook in imputing constructive heresies to Mr. Jenkins, we think the Church of England is to be congratulated on the result of an appeal which decides this most important preliminary point in favour of the Laity. The right of laymen to hold definite opinions of a more or less un- orthodox type in the Church of England is comparatively un- important compared with the much more important and valuable right to feel difficulties and avow difficulties without being judged by their clergyman, declared by him to mean something which they have never asserted, and on the strength of such conjectural imputations, cut off from acts of Christian worship to which they attach a deep spiritual value, and so forced into an artificial position of insulation and defiance.
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