THE PROTESTANT CHURCH OF IRELAND AND THE REFORMERS.
THE Protestant Church of Ireland can scarcely be regarded as a very sagacious interpreter of the times and their signs. Its general Convention of last year, by a resolution known as the Duke of Abercorn's resolution, appointed a Committee "to con- sider whether, without making any such alterations in the Liturgy or Formularies of our Church as would involve or imply a change in her Doctrines, any measure can be suggested calcu- lated to check the introduction and spread of novel doctrines and practices opposed to the principles of our Reformed Church, and to report to the General Synod in 1871." The Report of this Committee, which is even now under discussion in the General Synod of the Church of Ireland, lies before us. It is a very able and lucid document, drawn with considerable learning as well as point, and we do not know that for its limited purpose,—namely, the concerting of measures for the immediate discomfiture of the Ritualists in the Church,—it could have been better. But observe that the words of the resolution appointing the Committee are assumed by the Committee, and no doubt justly so assumed, to have no conceivable reference whatever to any "novel doctrines and practices opposed to the principles of our Reformed Church" except the "Ritualist" doctrines and practices. That any other prevalent doctrines at all might be regarded as "opposed to the principles of our Reformed Church" does not seem to have entered the minds either of the Convention or of their Committee. Indeed, the latter say boldly that "no true member of our Church will need to be convinced that a doctrine which is thus opposed [i.e., " op - posed to the principles of our Reformed Church "] is neither Scriptural nor Apostolic,"—a truly amazing assumption for the present day to make, when there is hardly a theologian of any profoundly critical culture, whether in England or the Continent, who would admit that our Reformers had gained more than the very rudest conceptions of those principles of interpretation by which the meaning of the Scriptures and the faith of the Apostles can now be best recovered. To speak of the views of Cranmer, and Ridley, and Jewell, or of the views embodied in the Articles of the Church, as affording final evidence as to what Scripture meant and what the Apostles taught, strikes us as one of the most astonishing pieces of narrow assumption to which a number of learned men who abjure human infallibility as a sort of blasphemy, ever put their signatures. Perhaps, however, we- must interpret this language by the haunting thought of Ritualism which seems to have possessed the Convention and the Committee which it appointed, as if it were the only conceivable source of danger- ous spiritual error ; perhaps we ought not to extend the meaning of the words used, beyond the special bearing on the views entertained' by the Reformers of the sacerdotal theory ; perhaps we ought to assume that the views of the Reformers as to the consistency and virtual infallibility of Scripture, and what we may call the spiritual psychology of the Gospels and Epistles, are not intended to be erected into an absolute standard for all future ages. But however this may be, it is at least very remarkable that the Irish Church, while it was positively haunted by the spectre of Ritualism, had no sense of any other serious danger to be guarded against in establishing its new basis of belief ; and that its Committee appear to accept this view without a shadow of doubt that there is pure wisdom in it, and that if Ritualism can once be well exorcised, the disestablished Irish Church has nothing further to fear from any form of doctrinal error. So unconsciously is this assumed, that though the Convocation did not name Ritualism and Sacerdotalism at all, but only "novel doctrines and practices opposed to the- principles of our Reformed Church" (which "novel doctrines and practices" might surely be in many directions besides the ritualistic), the Committee appear to have understood it as a most specific direction not only to look for safeguards against Ritualism, but not to look for safeguards against anything else. And no doubt they understood it precisely as the Convention meant them to understand it,—just as when a burglar is in the house the terror-stricken women will at once unanimously un- derstand that " he " refers to the burglar, and no one else. Yet it does seem strange that at a time when Ritualism is very far indeed from the most prosperous of innovations, when all the tend- encies of the age run counter to it and lend more or less aid to various very different innovations, the mind of the Irish Church should be so filled with its terrors as to recognize no practical danger elsewhere.
As regards the cautious alterations in the rubrics and services which the Committee have proposed,—all of them, of course, being intended to make clearer than before that the Irish Church recognizes no priesthood endowed with a miraculous power of metamorphosing the substance of the sacramental elements, or of absolving man from sin,—we can only say that they would certainly make the Irish Church more homogeneous in doctrine and more distinctly opposed in its teaching to the Roman Catholic Church. As to the doctrine of the Communion Service, it is quite clear that the Committee have proposed nothing which was not already very explicitly laid down in the Articles of the Church, —which Articles it has always been matter of astonishment to us that the Ritualists have been able, even to their own satisfaction, to explain away. As to the doctrine of absolution, and the power supposed to be conferred on the priesthood generally by the Ordi- nation Service, it is pretty clear that the Committee themselves, in denying that the Church of Great Britain and Ireland ever professed to sanction this doctrine or assumed to grant this power, are by no means certain that they are not defining in one sense what was clearly adapted, if not intended, to be ambiguous ; and some of their number hold that as no power to propose a substantial
doctrinal change, however slight, was committed to them, the recommendations on this head are ultra vires.
For our own parts, as our readers well know, we feel no sympathy with the doctrines against which either the one change or the other is directed. But it by no means follows that we must approve of the attempt to make the doctrine of the Church more imperative, and practically, we fear, even more sectarian, than it was before. It may be quite true that the Committee had to choose between proposals of a narrowing nature and simple inaction. They are directed to concert not how they might loose, but how they might bind the consciences of the clergy afresh. They were appointed to concert measures "calculated to check the intro- duction and spread of novel doctrines and practices opposed to the principles of our Reformed Church," and it would evidently have been far from satisfactory to the Synod had they simply reported that implicit confidence in the power of Truth, especially if com- bined with a decided relaxation of the conditions of clerical sub- scription,—relaxation of the terms, that is, for men of all tenden- cies, whether of the kind most dreaded, or an opposite kind,— would be the best guarantee against the artificial fascinations of any species of error. Had the Committee made such a report, they would, of course, have been told the old story,—that any relaxation of the fetters of the clergy would involve a withdrawal of the needful protection from the laity, and would be, moreover, a modification of a kind implying "a change in the doctrines of the Church." So it was not unnatural for the Committee to assume that if they proposed anything, it must not be in the direction of relaxation of dogmatic tests, but rather of sharper outline and definition. This is accordingly what they have done. They have added a question and answer to the Catechism, and annexed a clause that gives new emphasis to one of the rubrics, both of these changes being made by way of refuting all doctrines allied, however distantly, to Transubstantiation ; they have carefully excluded all appearance of sanctioning true sacer- dotal functions from the service conferring the office of the priest,—a word which they propose, by the way, in future to un- derstand uniformly in the sense of "presbyter ;" and they have excluded from the special absolution contained in the service for the Visitation of the Sick the vestiges of a priestly absolving power which still remained there. These latter changes would have been, to our minds, purely beneficial, had they been accompanied by such a general simplification of the dogmatic declarations of the Church as would have given an equivalent relief to clergy- men of High-Church tendencies ; but these, on the contrary, are rendered a shade more stringent by the proposals in relation to the Catechism and the Rubric which follows the Communion Service ; and we can hardly doubt that the general effect will be a decided stimulus to the sectarian Evangelicism of the Irish Church,—a decided contraction of its comprehension on one side, without any enlargement of it on any. Without feeling the least sympathy with the High Church, we may fairly say that prin- -ciples which admit of the presence of both High Church and Low Church must be, on the whole, less narrow and fettering than principles which admit of the latter only. The High Church, however strange and out of place their sacramental principles may be, have incidentally at least done a vast deal towards teaching men to recognize the divine grace which may be poured through material and earthly channels, into the heart ; and though they have seemed to limit this to acts which their theory represents as clothed with a sort of divine magic, the effect has been not the less to increase men's sense of the wonder of the earth, and of the mystery that may enrich the humblest elements of life with a life that is not of them, though it is in them. If the High Church has done this,—as who that understands the work of Newman and Keble and their friends can for a moment doubt?—is it not a pure loss to the strength of any Church to shut such a party resolutely out ? Would it not have been possible to remove some of the difficulties which earnest Evangelicals feel, and at the same time to remove some of the difficulties which earnest High Churchmen feel, in taking service in the new Church ? If instead of adding precision to the final Rubric on the Communion Service it had been struck out altogether, and at the same time the words to which many besides Evangelicals so justly object in the Ordination Service and the Absolution pronounced over the sick, had been also struck out, the Church would have been rendered less sec- tarian instead of more so, and a great step made towards bringing earnest men of all shades of creed into mutual confidence and hearty co-operation, and therefore into a better position for attaining the truth. That this policy of larger comprehension has not even been conceived by the Irish Church as the true policy of Christian faith and hope, is, we think, a bad omen for the future.
No doubt it may be congratulated on the evident hesitation and re- luctance with which the Committee advise every moderate retrench- ment of the principle of comprehension, a very slight and guarded step in the direction of Sectarianism. But this hesitation and reluct- ance, not the proposal to overcoaie it, seems to us the bright side of the report before us. The practical step actually suggested is a step,—though a trivial one,—towards sectarian life, not away from it ; and this is the more to be lamented, as the new liberty which might easily have been gained for both the opposing sections in the Church would have secured almost all the advantages con- templated by those who propose adding a fresh link to the clerical chain, and very much greater advantages in the way of encourag- ing wider principles and more fearless faith, as well. The new canons limiting the range of the external ritual in public worship may be needful for the sake of the laity ; but assuredly the laity have no interest in imposing even the slightest additional fetter on the hearts and consciences of their religious teachers.
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