THE REV. J. D. MAURICE ON SUBSCRIPTION. To THE EDITOR
OF THE " SPECTATOR."
Sin,—The debate of June 9th in the House of Commons can scarcely be obsolete at the end of ten days. The Standard announces, I hear, that Mr. Disraeli's speech is to be published and diffused through the length and breadth of the land. Perhaps, then, you will allow one who has thought a little upon the sub- ject, and bas studied this debate with especial care and interest, to make a few remarks on some of the topics which were handled by the different speakers.
1. There seemed to me this defect in Mr. Buxton's excellent speech. He represented truly and exactly the intention of James I. in imposing the Articles. He represented truly and exactly the intention of Bishop Sheldon in adding the clause to the Act of Uniformity which requires the assent and consent of those who use the Prayer Book to everything contained in it. He did not show how entirely the purpose of
James had been defeated by the Articles which ho im- posed. He did not show how Sheldon's act was stultified by the Prayer Book itself. The Articles never did stop dis- cussion. They produced innumerable discussions. They never did check investigation. They made investigation in every direction inevitable. Sheldon wished to wound the consciences of the Puritans. In doing so be endorsed the maxim of the Puritans. The principle of the Church of England was to make common worship and the old Catholic Creeds the bonds of Christian. fellowship, to treat dogmatic confessions as altogether subordinate to these—as useful only to vindicate them from the subtleties and limitations of a learned class. In the very moment when this principle was to be re-asserted, when Prayer was again to become Common Prayer, when the narrow decrees of the Westminster Synod were to be set aside, the Bishop persuades the Legislature to treat the Liturgy as a collection of dogmas, and to enforce it in terms which were only applicable to a document possessing that character ! But the Liturgy was too strong for this Puritanical persecutor of Puritans. It has for two centuries maintained its radical essential difference from any formulary like that with which it has been associated. Their coexistence for different purposes has made the distinction in their nature more palpable.
2. The attempt of Mr. Monckton Milnes to assert this dis- tinction, and to remedy the blunder which Sheldon committed, was, therefore, I think, like Lord Ebury's in the House of Lords, a most honourable and praiseworthy attempt. But coming in the form of an amendment to Mr. Buxton's motion, it had the effect, which you have pointed out, of destroying the balance between the Liturgy and the Articles, of appearing to give the latter an importance which it denied the former. The merits which Mr. Milnes claimed to the Articles as protectors of comprehensive principles against the partial notions of Roman- ists and of Puritans, as protectors of permanent principle, against the opinion of different ages, as protectors of manly investigation against those who would check it — these merits I also claim for them. And that is the very reason why, if I had been a member of the House of Commons, I should have voted for Mr. Buxton's motion. I will explain what I mean by alluding to two or three of the speakers who followed Mr. Milnes.
3. Lord Robert Cecil contrasted the three years' experience of Mr. Morrison and Mr. Butler-Johnstone with the two hundred years' experience which the nation has possessed since the Act of Uniformity. That experience of two hundred years seems to me invaluable. But if it compelled me to scorn the experience of this age, if it obliged me to slight the modest truthful testimonies of two young men who had courage to declare what they felt themselves and what their contemporaries were feeling, I shall be sure that I bad misunderstood it. The more I compare the lessons of those two hundred years with the lessons of these three years, the less discordance do I discover between them. Those two hundred years bear witness that subscription to the Articles, just so far as it has taken the form which James I. would have given it, has been mischievous and immoral, affecting to bind men with cords by which they could not be bound, which became green withes to every Samson, to which only those could submit who did not care to understand the Articles, or to make any use of them. Those same two hundred y ears have shown that subscription was salutary just so far as it was taken in exactly the opposite sense to this ; that being the natural sense of a document which was composed when men were protesting against mere earthly authority and implicit faith—which young men accepted as their guide who were commencing a liberal education, who were, therefore, invited and compelled to search and examine in all
directions—which was afterwards imposed upon clergymen at the time they were asking God for strength that they might feed His flock and not be blind loaders of the blind. These two hundred years have shown that the Prayer Bo3k has been a dead letter just so far as it has been accepted by clergymen in Sheldon's sense, as a book exactly expressing all their crude notions and unripe perceptions; has been a living teacher just so far as they have suffered it to lead them on to a higher faith and knowledge than they had attained, or than can ever be embodied in mere formal declarations. And now what has been the experience of the last three years? Within those years an eminent statesman— the author of the speech of the 9th of June—which is pronounced unanswerable, and is to be sown broadcast over England—stood up in the presence of one of the most eloquent and powerful of our prelates and of a large body of clergy, and told them that he approved of free inquiry for other people, but that they, by their act of subscription, had solemnly abjured the right to be free inquirers. Now, our young men may not be well acquainted with the ecclesiastical history of past ages. But they read the Times. They must be aware of this memorable occurrence. They suppose, doubtless, that the member for Buckinghamshire, the leader of the Conservatives, is a fair spokesman of the general sentiments of the laity and to the meaning and effect of sub- scription. They have a right to accept the Bishop of Oxford as a fair representative of the opinion of his own order. And if so, is it wonderful that they should say, "We will not give up the freedom to think which Mr. Disraeli guarantees to the layman, for the slavery which he and the Bishop seem to agree is the proper portion of the clergyman, which he cannot renounce with- out violating his vow?" And if that is a justification for Mr. Morrison and Mr. Butler-Johnstone—if they, as laymen, may naturally desire a relaxation of subscription for those who have grown up beside them, and who they see are shrinking from • orders, because they feel they must give up lay honesty to secure what they are told on high authority is clerical honesty—ought not we older men, who, when we subscribed the Articles, understood that we were pledging ourselves not to give up thinking and inquiring, but to think and inquire more steadily, more freely, than we ever did, earnestly to join the young men in their cry, earnestly to declare, that if we had un- derstood subscription to signify what Mr. Disraeli says that it signifies, we trust that we should have cut off our right hands before we would have used them for an act so offensive to God, so shamefully inconsistent with the solemn work upon which we were entering ?"
4. The Record, I perceive, is full of admiration for the sentiment of Mr. Henley, that clergymen who read the Prayer Book without believing it are dishonest men. I respect that senti- ment, and would apply it with all rigour against myself. I would never, for instance, give thanks in baptism for the regeneration of a child, if I did not believe that it was regenerate ; I would never teach a child out of the catechism that it was a child of God, if I did not strictlybelieve it to be a child of God. But I dare not say (I may incur the Record's displeasure by the avowal of such tolerance, but I am rather hardened to that displeasure) that a man is dishonest who uses this language in what seems to me a lax and non-natural sense. I have known many—whom I think very honest, very useful—who might have fallen under Mr. Henley's censure on this ground. I do not, therefore, count it a very immoral or dishonest act of Mr. Buxton to ask that the declaration of assent and consent to every word contained in the Prayer Book may be relaxed in favour of such persons. I think by such relaxation their consciences may be saved from much perplexity, and that the service may be saved for us who do not need the relaxation. But I have another word to speak on this point. If Mr. Disraeli's idea of subscription is the true idea, then one portion of the Prayer Book must be utterly cancelled— I mean that portion of it which contains the Ordination Service. You say that the questions to those who take orders, and all the solemn promises of this service, will be preserved, though sub- scription is abolished. I say they cannot be preserved if sub- scription—according to this representation of it—is retained. Can there be a greater mockery than to pray for a free spirit, the Spirit of God—the Spirit who, it is promised, should guide us into truth,—can there be a greater mockery than to say, "Receive this Spirit for the work of your ministry," when we have de- clared that we know all we mean to know, that we renounce all freedom, that we will be guided into no truth ?
5. Let, then, Mr. Gladstone's powerful argument for the duty of exalting a long historical tradition above mere h priori con- siderations of what is, or is not, desirable, have all the weight
which can be given to it. Let his testimony respecting the effects of conversions to Romanistn on the minds of Oxforl young men of his day have all the authority which is due to his means of information and his great ability in using those means. .Neither the history of the ages since the Reformation nor that struggle in our own time will show that a clergy who abandon their moral freedom are safe teachers of a land, or can preserve that for the laity which they have surrendered them- selves. Neither the history of the ages since the Reformation, nor that memorable attempt to shake oft national Article as in- consistent with the Catholic Creeds, will prove that it is safe to confound the national Articles with the Catholic Creeds, as all the champions of subscription in this debate appear to have done.
6. Again i let Mr. Disraeli's readings in the history of the last century and in its Arian divinity, have all the authority which can be given them. Only let him understand that when he im- putes Arian tendencies to those who differ With him—when he says that they must desire to get rid of the Creeds, though they affirm that they desire something altogether different—there may be retaliation. So long as I believe in the Trinity, so long as I profess my faith in the Creeds, I shall abjure as heretical and detestable his doctrine that the free Spirit of the Father and the Son is not stirring clergymen as well as laymen to ask that they may receive, to seek that they may find, to knock that it may be opened to them.—Faithfully yours, F. D. MAURICE.
P.S.—I would add one word respecting an apparent contradic- tion which Mr. Disraeli detected—and of which, of course, he made the most skilful use—between the appeal of Mr. Buxton to the public opinion of our day against the idea of subscription which prevailed in the days of King James and in those of Sheldon, and the doctrine of Mr. Milnes that the Articles have been a protection against public opinion. The opinion of the nine- teenth century may be, in many respects, better than the opinion of the seventeenth century. It is evidently better in this respect. Hardly any Romanist, any Puritan, any English Churchman hi that day, would have thought it ridiculous to attempt the suppression of adverse doctrines by decrees. Nearly every Romanist, nearly every Dissenter, nearly every English Churchman knows that it is ridiculous in our days. Mr. Buxton may safely invoke the opinion of 1863 against any revival of the notions of 1603 or 1662 on this point. But articles may have been assertion of permanent principles against the opinion both of the Stuart and the Brunswick periods, against the dogmas of Puritans and Romanists under King James, against the dogmas of Low Churchmen and High Churchmen under Queen Victoria. Subscription may have helped to make them such defenders. I think it has. But it may have utterly lost that effect. Through the perversion of its meaning it may be weaken- ing the influence of the Articles for good, and turning their influence to evil ; then, surely, it should be abandoned.
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