THE HIGH-CHURCH MEMORIAL.
IT is difficult, no doubt, to do justice to both sides of any political question, but on a question of ecclesiastical politics the exercise of common fairness seems all but impossible. The High-Church Memorial published in Thursday's Times, and commented on in one of those mordant leading articles which seem intended rather to override the subjects of criticism than to answer them, opens up one of these questions. There is and always has been in England on any subject connected with clerical encroachments a disposition rather to flog,—morally, we mean,—than to reason or to judge. We can understand the feeling. There is a certain narrowness of view, and especially a want of political grasp and comprehensiveness, in the way in which the clergy treat ecclesiastical questions. They calmly ignore the lay point of view altogether. And it is probable that they really are seldom capable of seeing it. Now the moment the public feel that on a public question which must be settled, if at all, on grounds satisfactory to the majority of the people, a little clique of clergymen are laying down the law without the least glimmering of insight into the main conditions which must determine the settlement, they get angry, and are moved, like all angry men, to have recourse to something like physical com- pulsion, just as a schoolmaster gets angry with and flogs an obstinate boy who not only is not aware of his own ignorance but harps on some irrelevant little notion of his own, as if it were the beginning and ending of all that could be said on the subject on which he displays his ignorance. We quite admit that the address of the High-Churchmen to the Archbishops and Bishops on the subject of the recent decisions in the Court of Arches, does display a good deal of this sort of narrowness and incapacity for seeing even the elements of the public question. But then, on the other hand, it displays convictions which, though they will not be of great in- terest to the average English layman, are convictions of very great importance indeed to earnest and sincere believers in the Church. And the peremptory birch-rod method of criticism will have no effect on men with such convictions, except to harden them in their convictions ; while its tendency as regards the public is to make them think that badgering clergymen is a very proper literary amusement, which makes up in some degree for the loss of the exciting bull-baitings of old times and the vulgar cock-fighting of London roughs. But little as the public dwell upon it, it is not only a fact that clergymen—even High-Church clergymen—have con- sciences, and scrupulous ones, but it is even desirable that they should have them. Nay, it is desirable that the laity should try and enter into their consciences, as far as may be possible, and it is quite essential that they should do so if they are to produce any sort of effect on the minds of clergymen in such controversies as, these, and to bring them to anything like reason. Let us make an effort to interpret between the two parties, and to show to the Laity the reasonableness of the embarrassment depicted in the memorial of the Clergy; and• on the other hand, to the High-Church Clergy the difficulty the Laity will feel in aceepting their suggestion. And first, let us remark that we believe the Times to- be' very unjust when it represents the Memorialists as men who, if they could have their way, would introduce the extravagancies of ultra-Ritualism, such as Mr. Tooth's, into the Church. Certainly, the Dean of St. Paul's, whatever he may think on one or two of the points in question, such as-the Eastward position in the prayer of Consecration of the, elements, has never been in any sense an extreme. Ritualist- and is too sober-minded ever to become one. Men like the Dean of St. Paul's, the Provost of Eton, the Warden of Keble,, are not likely to favour violent Ritualism of any kind. And: as a matter of fact, they certainly do not favour it. What this memorial means is not a demand for machinery by the help of which extreme practises may be introduced into the Church, but a demand that the Church shall be treated as if it were a living Church, with full power to regulate its own ceremonial,. and not as if it were a Church completely governed by the terms of an ancient, not to say an obsolete, document. Indeed,. if we-look may at the chief point insisted. on, by the Memos rialiste, it would not be easy to show that they are not come pletely in the right. In the recent prosecutions there has been aw elaborate appeal made, they say, to all sorts •of doubt.. ful and observe historical documents, for the purpose• of showing that certain vestments were, or were not, held to be- lawful ins Elizabeth's and the succeeding reigns ; again, we have the most conflicting evidence brought to show which way the Communion-tables stood at different periods in the churches, whether in the chancel or in the body of the church, whether unleavened bread was heldio-be lawful or not, whether water might be mingled with the wine, whether candles were lighted or-not when not, needed for light, and a number of other oeremeniat matters of the same- kind, which as-historical question® can now be •determined very doubtfully at the beet, and which no one would care to determine at all, but for one humiliating reasone—that the Church of the present day is not trusted-with the power of deciding for herself on what she will, permit and require and therefore we are driven-into these difficult discussionsin order to determine what ought to. be-done now, by what was or may have been donein the reigns-of Elizabeth and-the Stuarts. but. can a Church be said to have any life at all that has to go back on the most elaborate, anti- quarian investigations; in •order to settle trivial points •of this kind, which any living body ought to settle for itself V If the House of Lords has a dispute as to whether or not it is con- stitutional to admit life-peers, it appeals indeed to precedents first, but it decides the matter by its own vote in the end. If the • House of Commons debates a question of standing orders or privilege, the traditions, as usual, are quoted, but the matter is determined as the House chooses, whether with the tradi- tions or against them. The only institution in the country which is incapable of deciding even the pettiest matter, is the one institution of which the adWitted theory is that. it is inspired by a divine spirit aia governed by a super- natural head. To that institution, and that alone, the power of modifying itself in the slightest degree is absolutely denied,—nay, it must look outside itself even to know what its own customs are. The question of its doctrines, vestments, and ceremonies is decided for it by lawyers who need not even be Christians, on the evidence of Acts of Parliament of hundreds of years ago, elucidated by accidental scraps of antiquarian lore ; and this is all confessedly on the principle that it is not safe to give such an institution as thisthe power to do anything new, however minute, for itself, lest the flame of controversial passion should leap up afresh. Now;.we admit that to men of any earnest belief in the Church as a living power, this condi- tion of things must be very oppressive. And we-heartily believe that many, if not most, of the men who have signed this memorial would not support but resist the most advanced of the ritualistic innovations of which we have lately heard. What they do feel hard is that rather than trust the Church to decide , anything for itself, however trivial, now, thelawyers must-be. appealed to, to ransack history-for the right interpretation of .a law passed more than three centuries ago.
But while we can enter into the motives of. the Dean of, K.. Paul's and his colleagues, we see in their Memorial at least as much inability to understand the ,point of view of the laity as the Times of Thursday shows—or pretends—to understand, the Memorialists 1 What the Memorialists ask for as a settlement of the recent conflicts, is a return to the, rule that the practice of the State Church shall be settled by the proper representatives of the Church—her, Synods,—after receiving the approval of Parliament, but that nothing shall be binding on the. Church on which both) Parliament and the Church Synods shall not have agreed. What they want is that Convocation shall legislate,—that the legislation of Convocation shall be presented to Parliamenty and that if Parliament approves, it shall become law, but if Parliament alters, then-it shall go back to Convocation for its, assent, —just as alterations of the House of Commons in a Bill received from the Lords go. back to the House of Lords for its assent,—so that nothing shall be binding on- the Church which, is not thus agreed to both by. Church and- by State. Now, unquestionably. this demand implies a tree- mendons -change in the• constitutional. practice' ever since the Reformation. Whatever the theory may be, statutes never submitted to Convocation have- been accepted by the •Church, and treated as parts of its law by tribunals which were never till now challenged by- the .clergy. Any changein this practice. could hardly be introduced- without a struggle which would -itself be far more likely to end in..Disestablishment than in success for the new rule,—and.: this partly because, as everybody knows, there is a slightly fanatical party lying in wait for any occasion to renew the cry for Disestablishment ; and partly for the much better reason that the Houses of Convocation, as ,they exist at present, representthe laity of the Church a great deal less adequately than the House of Commons, in spite of all its-Dissenting= and alien elements, itself repre- sents them. Now is it possible that the Dean. of. St. Paul's and his colleagues are really intent on facing both these dangersi—first, the great danger of taking from Parliament the final authority over the Established Church, and agitating for - a veto. of the Church body on. the decisions of Parliart meat, as well, as a •veto of Parliament, on the: decisions of the Church body I: and secondly, the great danger of confront.. ing -and satisfying the cry which would. immediately arise,---if the first danger were ever passed—for such a reform of Convocae tion as, would give the laity of the_Chureh,—the whole laity, and not merely the laity as filtered out by any fine ecclesias- tics! filter,—their due weight with the clergy in the new Church body which• would then have to be created.? If they do mean all this, and are quite prepared for it, we can only say that they' should have made their Memorial something very different from. what it is.; and that, in that case, they would have made- it one, of the most remarkable and courageous manifestoes of our day. But if, as we suspect, they never glanced. at the -necessary conditions of the change they propose, and only wanted to make their special point without raising 'the broader principles it really involves, then we think they are liable to the charge of looking at a great question in as- one-sided a fashion, and with as little wish to enter into the views' of those whose alarm and annoyance led to the unfortunate ' Public Worship Regulation Act,' as the leading organs of the,English public show towards themselves, in commenting on their Memorial, and-bestowing on them, with so' much more gusto than justice, undiscriminating stripes prompted• by unintelligent-wonder and irritated feeling.
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