ANGLICANISM.* IT would be difficult to -find a better statement
of what the Church Times calls "the theology of the Spectator" than these lectures. They are exceptionally outspoken, exceptionally lucid, and exceptionally sane. That they should have been delivered by an English Bishop at the invitation of the highest authority in the Swedish Church is in every way matter for congratulation ; and we may hope, with the lecturer, that, by entering into closer relations with this venerable Church, ." the Church of England may recover touch with Continental Protestantism as a whole, and thus take up again a tradition the interruption of which has been mischievous both in England and in Europe."
The Bishop of Durham has the name, in sectarian circles, of being a party man. Seldom was a charge wider of the mark. He has, indeed—what no party man ever has—a singular power of seeing things as they are, which makes it impossible for him to regard the Church of England as anything but Pro- testant ; his grasp of actuality has shown him that the critical movement, with which he is not always personally in sym- pathy,- can neither be ignored nor arrested ; and he has a tern: peramental lack, of that smoothness which is commonly asso- ciated with the episcopal office. He is intolerant of insincerity ; and, as sincerity is rather a lay than a clerical virtue, he repre- sents rather the lay than the clerical element in the Church. Neither can be dispensed with ; but, as the latter is at present predominant, it is not amiss that the former should be rein- forced. Anglicanism is the statement of a standpoint rather than the manifesto of a school.
" No experience is so potent in shaking men's hold on dis- tinctive beliefs as that of defending them," he remarks acutely. This is why the most effective criticism of religion comes from within. With regard to the bearing of subscription on" such criticism, we cannot improve upon Paley's solution—i.e., that the rule is the animus imponentis, and that the inquiry is " Who is the imponens 7" and " What is his mind " In the case of the Thirty-nine Articles the imponens is the legislature of the 13th Eliz. (1571), and the intention was "to exclude from office in the Church all abettors of Popery ; Anabaptists, who were at that time a powerful party on the Continent ; Puritans, who were hostile to an episcopal constitution ; and (in general) the members of such leading sects or foreign establishments as threatened to overthrow our own." It is only by an . anachronism that the Articles can be held to apply to later controversies; persons who do not fall under one or other of these three categories are entitled to subscribe.
. 1 Anglicanism : Lectures on the Oleos Petri Foundation delivered at Uysala, Siotsiiibei, 1920. By Herbert Hensley Henson, Bishop of Durham. London 8d.j
It is obvious on which of the existing sections of Anglicanism the difficulty presses.
" The Anglo-Catholic Movement is confessedly Romanizing. . . . In stretching the duration of the undivided Catholic Church to so late a date as 1054, the whole case for the English Reforma- tion is surrendered and the' work of the English Reformers is wholly diSallowed."
And, when this is " supplemented by an argument from ' Chris- tian Experience ' which serves to authenticate, explicitly Or implicitly, the whole Roman system," can we wonder at the frequency of secession among persons rather logical than well- informed, and temperamental than judicious ? The wonder is that secessions are not more numerous and more important than they are. The Bishop quotes from the Report of the Anglo-Catholic Congress of 1920—published, strange as it may appear, by the S.P.C.K.—in which the Roman See is described as one " with which it is frankly anomalous that we should not be in communion. . . . Do we not long for the day when we can get rid of a provincialism, which has perhaps been inevitable, but is essentially pedantic ? . . ." and "escape from a situation almost unbearably absurd ? "
We recognize the great courage of a Bishop who allows himself to say of the recent Lambeth Conference that
" its method—its maintenance of apparent unanimity by the use of vague and ambiguous language, which is capable of varying and even conflicting interpretations—is peculiarly unfortunate ; for it really deceives nobody who is cognizant of the actual state of affairs within the Anglican Communion, and must tend to empty of practical value all the official pronouncements of tho united Anglican Episcopate. . . . Unanimity ceases to be morally impressive when it appears to be the result of calculating diplomacy ' ; who tells us that in the matter of the National Mission of 1916 the Archbishops " yielded to the disordered enthusiasm of the time " ; who describes the Enabling Act as " a fatal measure " ; who defends the principle of Establishment and that of a National Church ; who has a good word for private patronage, for family livings, and for " the parson's freehold." These rights are obviously open to abuse ; but to surrender them to the Bishops and the so-called " Good Churchmen " may be to invite some new abuses. If we get an official, or Dull, Church we shall have something more mischievous than either the High, the Broad, or the Low. He perhaps over-emphasizes the need of uniformity. " In the towns the most pressing episcopal embar- rassments arise from the lawlessness of the parochial clergy," which " perplex and humiliate the episcopate." Our differences of opinion and divergencies of ritual are certainly great;' and, in so far as they are due to the preponderance of what Pattison calls " the Party of Ignorance," are a source of weakness : Anglicanism is rather, from this point of view, a menagerie than a Church. So that it is not surprising that the Bishops are making a stand against such 'Eucharistic developments as Reservation and Benediction. Yet, when the full doctrine of the Mass is taught, and its full ceremonial practised, without even an Evangelical Bishop venturing to protest, a crusade against such details is unlikely either to excite enthusiasm or to meet with success. In view of the " incorrigible incoherences" of our system, the Bishops will inevitably be driven to a-mit the congregational principle in theory, as they have already admitted it in practice. What is important is that it shall be employed rationally, and confined to town churches where a given congregation is agreed in demanding ritual of a certain type. This would enable us to concentrate on the defence of single church areas from innovation. The liberty now given by the Bishops to foolish clergymen to transform our village services into a bad imitation of a Roman function has done.more than any other cause to empty our churches and to weaken the hold of religion on our people.
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