THE BASIS OF ECCLESIASTICAL UNITY.
To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."
SIR,-I am much obliged by your insertion of my letter, and grateful for the remarks which you have made upon it. I had not indeed supposed that you would desire to exercise a legal coercion on the opinions of the clergy, my difficulty arose from the doubt where or how far even a moral coercion could be exercised. We all, I suppose, seek simply the truth, and wish to maintain no single proposition except on the hypothesis that it is true. This remark will apply as much to belief in the Incarnation as to any other belief. Any one who has been brought up in the Unitarian School has of course made up his mind on the subject; but this broad negation is probably not the view of any one of our clergy. Still we may take a case which is possibly not altogether ideal. A man may have been moulded either in the Evangelical or the Trac- tarian school of theology ; he may have taken Orders with the most profound conviction of the truth of the Nicene or Athanasian dogmas ; his faith in a righteous and loving Father, who is at once his Judge and his Redeemer, may never have been shaken ; and yet he may have been led into historical investigations which may have reacted on his traditional Christianity. He may, for instance, have applied himself to the study of comparative mytho- logy, and this study may have shown to him a very singular paral- lelism between certain Gospel traditions and those which relate to the Sanskrit Kristna. Possibly after further examination per- plexity may have given way to the conviction that the whole narrative of the immaculate conception, the birth, and the early years of Christ, is part of the large inheritance of common Aryan tradition. Does this man still hold the doctrine of the Incarnation in a way which would justify his continuing a member of the English Church, whether as a clergyman or a layman ? (For I confess that I cannot- admit the distinction which you draw between them ? It may be otherwise with those who are prepared to apply legal coercion where they can ; but in your view, I should suppose that what is true or false for the one is also true or false for the other, and that the reason which should prevent the one from ministering ought also to cause the other to repudiate his membership.) But we may take another case, even more important, because I think that not improbably it is one which may not long hence become practically prominent. A man may have devoted himself to the study of the religious belief of mankind in all ages. He may have found in the Avesta, the storehouse of Zoroastrian theology, all the fundamental tenets of Christianity,—the Incarna- tion of the Word, the Sanctification of• the Spirit, Atonement, Justification by faith or belief in a Righteous Father, and Final Restoration. He may have seen that these tenets were formed into an esoteric or apocryphal system, with which the Jews were brought into contact during the captivity at Babylon. He may have traced the passage of this pi:mg, to Alexandria, and its mani- festation in the Septuagint (as compared with the Hebrew Old Testament) and in the Apocryphal books of the Hebrews. He may have seen that in all these, as well as in the Zoroastrian books, the Spirit, Wisdom, or Word of God, mean the same thing, and that the thing signified is a Divine Essence, not a person. An examination of the Gospels may have shown him that this very 7vnuc or Apocryphal wisdom was taught by Christ to His disciples, his exoteric teaching being conveyed by parables, His esoteric in set discourses, as those of the fourth Gospel. He may further have learnt that this wisdom was imperfectly apprehended by the Apostles, but most fully apprehended by St. Paul, who on this ground speaks of himself as knowing the mind of Christ, and as preaching another Gospel from that of the Twelve, which yet was not another, because it was in accordance with the secret teaching of our Lord.
I am merely sketching the bare outline of a course of thought which I suppose all will acknowledge to be of infinite importance. If the end be a conviction that the whole is a dream, and that this Apocryphal wisdom never had any existence, his old convictions may retain all their force ; but if he is led to think that the doctrine of St. Paul is precisely that of the Avesta, with a few slight changes or additions, then it is clear that his traditional belief must undergo a large modification. He may still speak of an Incarnation, and of Christ as the Incarnate Word, but would it be in a sense which would at all tally with the ordinary con- victions of Christians? The real question, however, to be asked is, ought he, if a clergyman, to resign office, or if a layman, to resign membership ? Would his belief, to use the old phrase, be more heretical than that of Archbishop Whately as given in the " Appendix " to his "Logic," sec. v., "Person ?"
Surely this is a subject which calls for the most serious con- sideration, while the evidence already at our command seems to show that the very root of our belief in the Incarnation will be most strictly scrutinized. It clearly will not do to aim at sup- pressing such inquiries by denunciations. I only ask, "Are we bound to maintain that belief in this doctrine must be the basis of ecclesiastical unity, and if so, what is the common truth which, under the various phases of this doctrine, is or ought to be held by the members of the Church, whether lay or clerical ?"—I am, &c., A. Z.
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