THE BISHOP OF LONDON'S CHARGE.
TEE Bishop of London is not a man from whom we had reason to look for any new light to be thrown on the speculative per
plexities of religions thinkers. Able and indefatigable in the dis charge of the executive duties of his office, he is neither a great orator, a learned theologian, nor a profound philosopher, but simply
an active and clear-headed man of business, with an extra
ordidary faculty for getting through an overwhelming mass of official work in a comparatively short time. Highly as such qualities are to be valued, and sure as they are of being re warded with professional success, they furnish no guarantee of power to aid in guiding a nation through that perilous transition period of its history, when, having outgrown those religious forms and institutions which took their shape from the wants and knowledge of the past, it imperatively demands that they should assimilate themselves to the science and moral culture of the present, and prove the eternal truth of the principles they enshrine, by revealing beneath decay the new and more perfect forms in which the religious life of the people is henceforth to manifest itself. We looked therefore for the Bishop of London's charge with feelings of the same kind with which we expect a royal speech or a diplomatic correspondence ; not as likely to sway the intellect cf men by bold conceptions and profound reasoning, or to melt their hearts by the fervour of its piety and the largeness of its charity, but as indicating the practical course which a power in
the State would recommend-in a critical position of affairs. And as such this pastoral address is full of matterfor comment ; for a power in the State the Metropolitan Bishop undoubtedly is even in these days ; and if he could throw into the scales of the coming conflict nothing but his mitre and his crosier, they would be sufficient reason for giving earnest heed to the words of advioe which have fallen from his It is not our intention to follow the Bishop through that unduly expanded portion Of this discourse which he devotes to the vexed question of Baptismal Regeneration: indeed, we regret that after his opinion as a judge had been overruled, he should have deemed it seemly to carry his appeal ad popteltem, and so do his best to rekindle the smouldering embers of theological strife, in presence of the common foe, and threatened, as he says, in front and rear. But one point we must advert to as brought out by the Bishop more clearly than usual—that the whole controversy is more Me of phrase than fact ; for while the Church asserts regeneration to be the unconditional effect of baptism, she nowhere defines what regeneration means ; and the Bishop himself, in his attempt at definition, only substitutes a series of figurative phrases for one figurative word ; while in distinguishing between the "opus operatum" of the Church of Rome and the sacramental grace of the Church of England, he fails to perceive that the fatal error of the Romanist theory is not that it makes a mystical virtue inherent in the material elements of the sacrament, but that it makes a ceremonial performance the constant and necessary condition of a spiritual effect—a mechanical means indissolubly connected with a moral end a notion which seems not only contrary to the fundamental principles of all our philosophy, but subversive, if logically followed out, of true morality and religion. Could not an approximation to the truth on this subject be obtained, by comparing such children as have been baptized with those who, under circumstances exactly similar in all other respects, have not, from the peculiar religious belief of their parents, been subjected to this ordinance P The differentia of these two classes will be the fact couched in the phrase "baptismal regeneration." We trust the London clergy will see more ground for consolation than we can perceive in the Bishop's notable discovery, that the Privy Council managed to " overlook " the real deadly heresy in Mr. Gorhain's answers and only sanctioned by their judgment certain allowable eccentricities of doctrine. We confess that to us this hair-splitting savours of nisi-prius astuteness rather than of real intellectual subtilty. At any rate, it is by no dodge of that sort that a Prelate of the Church ought to seek to defend the truth, which he deems assailed by a judgment almost avowedly based upon considerations of expediency; but rather, if it be possible, by such interpretation of the dogmatic articles as may remove from the minds of men the misconceptions which have caused so many to find them an offence to their reason and conscience ; and if that be impossible, by labouring to restore to the Church in fact the power she possesses in theory' of " deliberating " in Convooation on questions of doctrine and discipline. We presume that in his recommendation of this latter course the Bishop is sincere ; but he has taken great pains to encourage the suspicion that he means by it little or nothing, by intimating that such deliberation should be by no means applied to the Liturgy, for that the result would be an attempt to eliminate all its "characteristic excellence." It is not probable that a Synod once invested with legislative powers would submit to have them limited to mere interpretation of formularies, though even that would give them tolerably large scope ; much less to the passing of ecclesiastical police acts for the better restraining and punishing refractory members of the inferior order of clergy. This is the very argument of those who oppose the restoration of the powers of Convocation, and also the very reason why so many of the most religious and reflecting men in England look to such restoration as the one means of bringing back the Church to her popularity and efficiency. The exact thing wanted is, to apply the living heart and intellect and learning of the age to just those points whose discussion the Bishop deprecates. This is the old story of "the altar candles" again : we may place the candles there if we will, but by no manner of means light them ; we may have Convocation if we please, but make a real use of it—God forbid ! the Bishop knows too well the value of peace and quietness. It is, however, something to find a Bishop calling for a Convocation • something still better to hear him say, "It may be questioned vrhether the Church should not be represented by a body consisting of lay ELS well as clerical members. We do not suppose there is any question about it beyond the precincts of the Episcopal bench and the palings of a few country parsonages. Still, though hinted hypothetically, it is a wise and a liberal hint ; and we think the address would have been worth delivering if only for this sentence. It is satisfactory, too, to find that the Bishop at last begins to appreciate the Popish pantomime which has been long enacting in many of the Metropolitan churches. Bitter, we should think, must have been the self-reproach of some of the clergy then present, to whom the Bishop alluded as having "imitated, as nearly as it was possible to imitate without a positive infringement of the law, the forms and ceremonies of the Church of Rome ; and as having insinuated, without openly asserting, some of the most dangerous of the errors which our own Reformed Church has renounced and condemned, and as thereby paving the way for the recent lamentable secessions." Nothing could be more true or more deserved than this ; only it would have been also true, just, and graceful, if the Right Reverend Lord Bishop of London, while reproving his clergy for their fault, had in godly penitence and Christian humility confessed and deplored his own share in that fault. More lustre would have been shed upon The Episcopal throne of St. Paul's than by all the learning, eloquence, and logic, with which some of our enraptured contemporaries have recently adorned it.
Nor, while rebuking the burlesque Catholicity of semi-Romanids who have retained their ministerial office in our Church, does he forget to apply the lash right heartily to those weak-minded and inconsistent persons who, because the Church of their baptism asserted with some degree of vagueness one Catholic dogma, have rushed blindfold into a church which not only demands implicit belief in a host of dogmas neither Catholie nor Scriptural, but claims the right to forge new articles of faith at its pleasure, and make them, under penalty of damnation, binding on the reason and conscienceof its enslaved devotees.
Passing on by a natural transition, the Bishop, in words which will carry more weight from their exemplary calmness and freedom from exaggeration, characterizes the recent aggression of the Pope "as an assertion on his part of a right to do that which the laws of England have forbidden —" as a measure against which not only the Church but the Government of this country is bound emphatically to protest." At the same time, he reiterates the conviction expressed in his answer to the Westminster clergy, "that the -very boldness of the pretensions put forth by the Bishop of Rome and his agents will prevent their success" ; and goes on to say, "that Popery cannot long maintain its hold of a welleducated people imbued with a knowledge of Holy Scripture." Heartily do we wish these sentences may go through the length and breadth of the land, their own intrinsic excellence heightened by the sanction of episcopal authority. This momentary alarm will indeed prove a blessing, if it waken in the minds of all classes of the community a sense of the absolute necessity, if only for self-preservation, of a national education. Among other good effects, it will, we trust, disarm mischievous and hot-brained fanatics from availing themselves of the class jealousies of the clergy of all denominations, for the purpose of thwarting the Government in their really honest desire to spread knowledge through the land. Against the political aggression of an Italian prince it may be proper to appeal to Parliament for the revival of old or the enactment of new statutes, by which it may be made a punishable offence to use in this country titles derived from English territory and conferred by a foreign potentate.; but against what is of infinitely more importance than a mere imbecile impertinence—against the spread of slavish corrupting superstition among our people, we must not look to Parliament to aid us. Repressive laws can only check for a time the manifestations, not the real progress of the disease : that can be effected only by enlightening the minds and improving the material condition of our poorer classes. And that the people may prize education, knowledge and self-restraint must be allowed to open for their possessors a career
of honour and success ; places of dignity and influence must be filled by the bees and not the drones of society. Especially those who have the disposal of Church patronage should look to it, that the face of a system which has always been eminent for the skill with which it has selected its best men for its highest posts, they do not give way to that spirit of faction and nepotism which has done more to ruin the reputation and sap the usefulness of the Church of England than all the abuse and opposition of its enemies or the desertion of its apostate children. But the Bishop holds, that "from the theology of Germany, grafted upon or grown out of the idealism of the German philoso phers, we have more to fear than from that of Rome." Particu
larly. he anticipates danger from those "who think they may deny the inspiration of Holy Scripture as the Church understands it, without milling in question the historical evidences of Christianity "—who wish to "cast off what they term a superstitious reverence for the text of the Bible." This, we have no doubt, means something, and is the Bishop's honest conviction ; but taken ' strictly, it is so sweeping that we cannot suppose the Bishop intends it to be so taken ; and as no qualification is hinted, ited, it remains so indeterminate that every man will give it his own interpretation, and it is consequently useless as a direction or a beacon. Moreover, he should be careful of using language which the bigots of both High and Low Church, who turn inspiration into dictation, will quote, under the sanotion of his name and office, as denouncing not more the foreign phantoms—who are to him, we suspect, mere nominis umbra—than the physical conclusions of Canon Sedgwick and Dean Buekland, the philological and historical criticism of Arnold, the vital Christianity and profound learning of Professor Maurice and Archdeacon Hare. It is with these and other distinguished ornaments of his own Church that he is at issue ; and if he wished fairly to discuss the question, why did he not declare what the Church holds the inspiration of Holy Scripture to be ? Does it assert infallible accuracy of historical detail ? Does it hold the logical processes of Paul and John to be articles of faith ? Does it claim implicit belief for the physical notions of the Sews, and for that floating body of national tradition which formed a supplement to the records of the Old Testament and is continually turning up in the New? Above all, does it hold that two contradictory facts may both be true P or, what is more immoral still, that where such facts are found, we are bound to invent some hypothetical fiction which will remove the contradiction? What a miserable farce it is for a man in Bishop Blomfield's position thus cavalierly to touch a topic of perhaps more pressing importance than any other to the future of the Church ! We protest, too, against this most immoral practice, so common in England amongst religious people, of uttering vague and vituperative rhodomontades against German writers, of whom they generally know nothing, not even the language they write in ; and we take leave to tell Bishop Blorafield, that if fifty years hence there be a bishop and a church in England, it will in no slight degree be bwing to the deep spiritual life which these German philosophers have aroused and nourished in the European mind. For the "Church of the Future" the Inspiration question is as momentous as the "Condition-of-England question" for the State of the Futare; and in the settlement of this question, unless our country bestir herself, Germany will have left little for our much-expeoted synodical action to complete. Such are the main topics of the Bishop of London's charge ; but, long as this paper already is, we have been ()reopened to omit a reference to other questions of greatinterest upon which the Bishop has touched. The exhortations to avoid polemics, and attend more zealously to the plain everyday duties of a clergymans office, are well worthy of the serious attention of those to whom they are addressed. For, after all, upon these, much more than upon vexed questions of dogma or schemes of mechanical organization, does the efficiency of a church depend. Christianity, be it remembered, is not a series of propositions nor a system of opinions, but the revelation of a divine guide and teacher, educating humanity, and ever drawing all men to Himself To make Him known—to make all men free in the knowledge of Him—this is the high privilege of the ministers of his Church ; and they then bescfsiltil their mission, when, leaving subtile disputes and abstruse raleenlation, they follow their Divine Master in his life of love in action and. patience in suffering.
Previous page
