LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE VOYSEY JUDGMENT.—A NEW " ARTICLE " OF RELIGION.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—You have hit so skilfully the various blots in Lord Hather- ley's decision, that it may seem superfluous to advert again in this week's Spectator to the theology of the Voysey Judgment. But as a Broad-Churchman, i.e., one who believes and preaches that the inexorable love of God besieges, and will besiege, each human soul, until all shall bow the knee in filial adoration and trust before the infinite perfectness revealed in our incarnate Lord and elder brother, I must ask you to allow me to tender through your columns my emphatic protest against the new Article of Faith which the Lord Chancellor has added to the Thirty-Nine. Under these last, especially as interpreted by the great and liberating judgment in the case of " Essays and Reviews,"I have experienced no strain upon the healthful movements of my conscience and intel- lect. Speaking honestly and soberly, and with all the earnestness which the present crisis demands, I have found those Articles helps, and not hindrances, in my public ministrations. The first Article, on the unity of the Divine Nature, which asserts the inde- feasible identity of the divine will, of " infinite power, wis- dom, and goodness," amid all the various circumstances of successive revelations, has, so to speak, transfigured for me the teaching of all the remaining ones. Accordingly, the second Article, being like unto the first, can only proclaim the unique and solitary glory of that filial self-sacrifice, which at once unveils to U.9 the philanthropy of God (to translate literally St. Paul's words in the Epistle to Titus), and, at the same time, supplies in man that perfect surrender to the all-embracing charity of our heavenly Father which alone " satisfies " or " reconciles " him. And this latter phrase need not occasion any ethical disturbance or
distress, if we will but remember the very pathetic affirma- tion, in the Book of Genesis, that the Lord was " grieved at his heart," an affirmation which, if its moral significance be duly pondered and applied, will gradually eliminate from the idea of " reconciliation " all the old forensic leaven, and restore to us that idea, as the pure bread of Heaven, by which, indeed, a man can live. The " reconciliation," if regarded as the antithesis to the divine sorrow, and as reflected back from "the mind of Christ," is surely a gospel of which one need not be ashamed, of which I at least am not. Did your space permit, I could, in like manner, indicate how the teaching of the 15th and 31st Articles is in entire accordance with the first one, and that there is not a phrase in either which I desire either to qualify or change.
But I must hasten to consider another aspect of what I may venture to call the Sacrificial Articles ; and that is, their historical and protesting character. As affirmations of doctrine they are, in this light, rather articles of war, than articles of peace. They do not so much instruct me respecting the nature of Christ's sacrifice, as they emphatically proclaim that " the sacrifices of the Masses are blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits," because they deny the efficacy of the one great "sacrifice, propitiation, and satisfaction for all the sins of the whole world." Now, in making this world-famous protest, our Reformers might have employed terms which would have explicitly informed us that they had no quarrel with the Romish conception of sacrifice in itself ; they might have used the terrible phraseology of Aquinas in relation to the sufferings of Christ, but they do not. And by a reticence which I can only regard as providential, they leave me at liberty to draw from Scripture and a true philosophy what the real aim and essence of a divine sacrifice must be. The Lord Chancellor, however, makes a wholly new demand upon me. He affirms that "the question is whether it be, or not, consistent with the Articles of Religion to deny that Christ bore the punishment due to our sins," and then it is added, " we think that to deny this statement, without any qualification, is inconsistent with the plain meaning of the 2nd and 15th Articles of Religion." I do deny the statement, without any qualification, because it confounds sacrifice with punishment, because it is a novel and alien addition to the plain meaning of the Articles, because it can neither be " read in Scripture," nor "proved thereby ;" because it would render all other punishment inflicted by God gratuitous or unjust ; and because, finally, it is a state- ment which makes it impossible for anyone who accepts it, in its "plain meaning," to believe in the forgiveness of sins.
Omitting other points in this judgment, and only alluding to the grotesqueness of its microscopic analysis of heretical details in the case of a gentleman who is, as it seems to me, almost less Christian in his convictions than Chunder Sen, I would fain find some comfort in the admission that " the question how far a denial of the doctrine that man being born in sin is therefore an inheritor of endless suffering, plainly contradicts the Articles may be open to much more doubt," and I am grateful for being reminded that "it is not lawful for the Church to ordain anything that is contrary to God's Word written." God's word written in the New Testament never hints that " Christ bore the punishment due to our sins." But it tells me instead that he died for our sins, that he bore them, that by his stripes we are healed, and that God is in him reconciling the world to himself, words all of awful and living power. But what of this new decree, and whose turn is it next to be broken on the wheel of this new Article ?—I am, Sir, &c., A LONDON PRESBYTER.
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