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The transmission of orders from the Apostles to an English clergyman of the
present day must have been through a very great number of intermediate persons.
Now, it is probable that no clergyman in the Church of England can trace up his
spiritual genealogy from bishop to bishop so far back as the time of the
Conquest. There remain many centuries during which the history of the
transmission of his orders is buried in utter darkness. And whether he be a
priest by succession from the Apostles depends on the question, whether during
that long period, some thousands of events took place, any one of which may,
without any gross improbability, be supposed not to have taken place. We have
not a tittle of evidence for any one of these events. We do not even know the
names or countries of the men to whom it is taken for granted that these events
happened. We do not know whether the spiritual ancestors of any one of our
contemporaries were Spanish or Armenian, Arian or Orthodox. In the utter absence
of all particular evidence, we are surely entitled to require that there should
be very strong evidence indeed that the strictest regularity was observed in
every generation, and that Episcopal functions were exercised by none who were
not bishops by succession from the Apostles. But we have no such evidence. In
the first place, we have not full and accurate information touching the polity
of the Church during the century which followed the persecution of Nero. That,
during this period, the overseers of all the little Christian societies
scattered through the Roman empire held their spiritual authority by virtue of
holy orders derived from the Apostles, cannot be proved by contemporary
testimony, or by any testimony which can be regarded as decisive. The question,
whether the primitive ecclesiastical constitution bore a greater resemblance to
the Anglican or to the Calvinistic model, has been fiercely disputed. It is a
question on which men of eminent parts, learning, and piety have differed, and
do to this day differ very widely. It is a question on which at least a full
half of the ability and erudition of Protestant Europe has ever since the
Reformation, been opposed to the Anglican pretensions. Mr. Gladstone himself, we
are persuaded, would have the candor to allow that, if no evidence were admitted
but that which is furnished by the genuine Christian literature of the first two
centuries, judgment would not go in favor of prelacy. And if he looked at the
subject as calmly as he would look at a controversy respecting the Roman Comitia
or the Anglo-Saxon Witenagemote, he would probably think that the absence of
contemporary evidence during so long a period was a defect which later
attestations, however numerous, could but very imperfectly supply. It is surely
impolitic to rest the doctrines of the English Church on a historical theory
which, to ninety-nine Protestants out of a hundred, would seem much more
questionable than any of those doctrines. Nor is this all. Extreme obscurity
overhangs the history of the middle ages; and the facts which are discernible
through that obscurity prove that the Church was exceedingly ill regulated. We
read of sees of the highest dignity openly sold, transferred backwards and
forwards by popular tumult, bestowed sometimes by a profligate woman on her
paramour, sometimes by a warlike baron on a kinsman still a stripling. We read
of bishops of ten years old, of bishops of five years old, of many popes who
were mere boys, and who rivaled the frantic dissoluteness of Caligula, nay, of a
female pope. And though this last story, once believed throughout all Europe,
has been disproved by the strict researches of modern criticism, the most
discerning of those who reject it have admitted that it is not intrinsically
improbable. In our own island, it was the complaint of Alfred that not a single
priest south of the Thames, and very few on the north, could read either Latin
or English. And this illiterate clergy exercised their ministry amidst a rude
and half-heathen population, in which Danish pirates, unchristened, or
christened by the hundred on a field of battle, were mingled with a Saxon
peasantry scarcely better instructed in religion. The state of Ireland was still
worse. "Tota illa per universam Hiberniam dissolutio, ecclesiasticae
disciplinae, illa ubique pro consuetudine Christiana saeva subintroducta
barbaries," are the expressions of St. Bernard. We are, therefore, at a loss to
conceive how any clergyman can feel confident that his orders have come down
correctly. Whether he be really a successor of the Apostles depends on an
immense number of such contingencies as these; whether, under King Ethelwolf, a
stupid priest might not, while baptizing several scores of Danish prisoners who
had just made their option between the font and the gallows, inadvertently omit
to perform the rite on one of these graceless proselytes; whether, in the
seventh century, an impostor, who had never received consecration, might not
have passed himself off as a bishop on a rude tribe of Scots; whether a lad of
twelve did really, by a ceremony huddled over when he was too drunk to know what
he was about, convey the Episcopal character to a lad of ten.
Since the first century, not less, in all probability, than a hundred thousand
persons have exercised the functions of bishops. That many of these have not
been bishops by apostolically succession is quite certain. Hooker admits that
deviations from the general rule have been frequent, and with a boldness worthy
of his high and statesmanlike intellect, pronounces them to have been often
justifiable. "There may be," says he, "sometimes very just and sufficient reason
to allow ordination made without a bishop. Where the Church must needs have some
ordained, and neither hath nor can have possibly a bishop to ordain, in case of
such necessity the ordinary institution of God hath given oftentimes, and may
give place. And therefore we are not simply without exception to urge a lineal
descent of power from the Apostles by continued succession of bishops in every
effectual ordination." There can be little doubt, we think, that the succession,
if it ever existed, has often been interrupted in ways much less respectable.
For example, let us suppose, and we are sure that no well-informed person will
think the supposition by any means improbable, that, in the third century, a man
of no principle and some parts, who has, in the course of a roving and
discreditable life, been a catechumen at Antioch, and has there become familiar
with Christian usages and doctrines afterwards rambles to Marseilles, where he
finds a Christian society, rich, liberal, and simple-hearted. He pretends to be
a Christian, attracts notice by his abilities and affected zeal, and is raised
to the Episcopal dignity without having ever been baptized. That such an event
might happen, nay, was very likely to happen, cannot well be disputed by any one
who has read the Life of Peregrinus. The very virtues, indeed, which
distinguished the early Christians, seem to have laid them open to those arts
which deceived
"Uriel, though Regent of the Sun, and held The sharpest-sighted spirit of all in
Heaven."
Now this unbaptized impostor is evidently no successor of the Apostles. He is
not even a Christian; and all orders derived through such a pretended bishop are
altogether invalid. Do we know enough of the state of the world and of the
Church in the third century to be able to say with confidence that there were
not at that time twenty such pretended bishops? Every such case makes a break in
the apostolically succession.
Now, suppose that a break, such as Hooker admits to have been both common and
justifiable, or such as we have supposed to be produced by hypocrisy and
cupidity, were found in the chain which connected the Apostles with any of the
missionaries who first spread Christianity in the wilder parts of Europe, who
can say how extensive the effect of this single break may be? Suppose that St.
Patrick, for example, if ever there was such a man, or Theodore of Tarsus, who
is said to have consecrated in the seventh century the first bishops of many
English sees, had not the true apostolically orders, is it not conceivable that
such a circumstance may affect the orders of many clergymen now living? Even if
it were possible, which it assuredly is not, to prove that the Church had the
apostolically orders in the third century, it would be impossible to prove that
those orders were not in the twelfth century so far lost that no ecclesiastic
could be certain of the legitimate descent of his own spiritual character. And
if this were so, no subsequent precautions could repair the evil.
Chillingworth states the conclusion at which he had arrived on this subject in
these very remarkable words: "That of ten thousand probables no one should be
false; that of ten thousand requisites, whereof any one may fail, not one should
be wanting, this to me is extremely improbable, and even cousin-german to
impossible. So that the assurance hereof is like a machine composed of an
innumerable multitude of pieces, of which it is strangely unlikely but some will
be out of order; and yet, if any one be so, the whole fabric falls of necessity
to the ground: and he that shall put them together, and maturely consider all
the possible ways of lapsing and nullifying a priesthood in the Church of Rome,
will be very inclinable to think that it is a hundred to one, that among a
hundred seeming priests, there is not one true one; nay, that it is not a thing
very improbable that, amongst those many millions which make up the Romish
hierarchy, there are not twenty true." We do not pretend to know to what precise
extent the canonists of Oxford agree with those of Rome as to the circumstances
which nullify orders. We will not, therefore, go so far as Chillingworth. We
only say that we see no satisfactory proof of the fact, that the Church of
England possesses the apostolically succession. And, after all, if Mr. Gladstone
could prove the apostolically succession, what would the apostolically
succession prove? He says that "we have among us the ordained hereditary
witnesses of the truth, conveying it to us through an unbroken series from our
Lord Jesus Christ and his Apostles." Is this the fact? Is there any doubt that
the orders of the Church of England are generally derived from the Church of
Rome? Does not the Church of England declare, does not Mr. Gladstone himself
admit, that the Church of Rome teaches much error and condemns much truth? And
is it not quite clear, that as far as the doctrines of the Church of England
differ from those of the Church of Rome, so far the Church of England conveys
the truth through a broken series?
That the founders, lay and clerical, of the Church of England, corrected all
that required correction in the doctrines of the Church of Rome, and nothing
more, may be quite true. But we never can admit the circumstance that the Church
of England possesses the apostolically succession as a proof that she is thus
perfect. No stream can rise higher than its fountain. The succession of
ministers in the Church of England, derived as it is through the Church of Rome,
can never prove more for the Church of England than it proves for the Church of
Rome. But this is not all. The Arian Churches which once predominated in the
kingdoms of the Ostrogoths, the Visigoths, the Burgundians, the Vandals, and the
Lombards, were all Episcopal Churches, and all had a fairer claim than that of
England to the apostolically succession, as being much nearer to the
apostolically times. In the East, the Greek Church, which is at variance on
points of faith with all the Western Churches, has an equal claim to this
succession. The Nestorian, the Eutychian, the Jacobite Churches, all heretical,
all condemned by councils, of which even Protestant divines have generally
spoken with respect, had an equal claim to the apostolically succession. Now if,
of teachers having apostolically orders, a vast majority have taught much error,
if a large proportion have taught deadly heresy, if on the other hand, as Mr.
Gladstone himself admits, Churches not having apostolically orders, that of
Scotland for example, have been nearer to the standard of orthodoxy than the
majority of teachers who have had apostolically orders, how can he possibly call
upon us to submit our private judgment to the authority of a Church on the
ground that she has these orders?
Mr. Gladstone dwells much on the importance of unity in doctrine. Unity he tells
us, is essential to truth. And this is most unquestionable. But when he goes on
to tell us that this unity is the characteristic of the Church of England, that
she is one in body and in spirit, we are compelled to differ from him widely.
The apostolically succession she may or may not have. But unity she most
certainly has not, and never has had. It is a matter of perfect notoriety, that
her formularies are framed in such a manner as to admit to her highest offices
men who differ from each other more widely than a very high Churchman differs
from a Catholic, or a very low Churchman from a Presbyterian; and that the
general leaning of the Church, with respect to some important questions, has
been sometimes one way and sometimes another. Take, for example, the questions
agitated between the Calvinists and the Arminians. Do we find in the Church of
England, with respect to those questions, that unity which is essential to
truth? Was it ever found in the Church? Is it not certain that, at the end of
the sixteenth century, the rulers of the Church held doctrines as Calvinistic as
ever were held by any Cameronian, and not only held them, but persecuted every
body who did not hold them? And is it not equally certain, that the rulers of
the Church have, in very recent times, considered Calvinism as a
disqualification for high preferment, if not for holy orders? Look at the
questions which Archbishop Whitgift propounded to Barret, questions framed in
the very spirit of William Huntington, S. S.1 And
then look at the eighty-seven questions which Bishop Marsh, within our own
memory, propounded to candidates for ordination. We should be loth to say that
either of these celebrated prelates had intruded himself into a Church whose
doctrines he abhorred, and that he deserved to be stripped of his gown. Yet it
is quite certain that one or other of them must have been very greatly in error.
John Wesley again, and Cowper's friend, John Newton, were both Presbyters of
this Church. Both were men of ability. Both we believe to have been men of rigid
integrity, men who would not have subscribed a Confession of Faith which they
disbelieved for the richest bishopric in the empire. Yet, on the subject of
predestination, Newton was strongly attached to doctrines which Wesley
designated as "blasphemy, which might make the ears of a Christian to tingle."
Indeed it will not be disputed that the clergy of the Established Church are
divided as to these questions, and that her formularies are not found
practically to exclude even scrupulously honest men of both sides from her
altars. It is notorious that some of her most distinguished rulers think this
latitude a good thing, and would be sorry to see it restricted in favor of
either opinion. And herein we most cordially agree with them. But what becomes
of the unity of the Church, and of that truth to which unity is essential? Mr.
Gladstone tells us that the Regium Donum was given originally to orthodox
Presbyterian ministers, but that part of it is now received by their heterodox
successors. "This," he says, "serves to illustrate the difficulty in which
governments entangle themselves, when they covenant with arbitrary systems of
opinions, and not with the Church alone. The opinion passes away, but the gift
remains." But is it not clear, that if a strong Supralapsarian had, under
Whitgift's primacy, left a large estate at the disposal of the bishops for
ecclesiastical purposes, in the hope that the rulers of the Church would abide
by Whitgift's theology, he would really have been giving his substance for the
support of doctrines which he detested? The opinion would have passed away, and
the gift would have remained.
This is only a single instance. What wide differences of opinion respecting the
operation of the sacraments are held by bishops, doctors, presbyters of the
Church of England, all men who have conscientiously declared their assent to her
articles, all men who are, according to Mr. Gladstone, ordained hereditary
witnesses of the truth, all men whose voices make up what, he tells us, is the
voice of true and reasonable authority! Here, again, the Church has not unity;
and as unity is the essential condition of truth, the Church has not the truth.
Nay, take the very question which we are discussing with Mr. Gladstone. To what
extent does the Church of England allow of the right of private judgment? What
degree of authority does she claim for herself in virtue of the apostolically
succession of her ministers? Mr. Gladstone, a very able and a very honest man,
takes a view of this matter widely differing from the view taken by others whom
he will admit to be as able and as honest as himself. People who altogether
dissent from him on this subject eat the bread of the Church, preach in her
pulpits, dispense her sacraments, confer her orders, and carry on that
apostolically succession, the nature and importance of which, according to him,
they do not comprehend. Is this unity? Is this truth?
It will be observed that we are not putting cases of dishonest men who, for the
sake of lucre, falsely pretend to believe in the doctrines of an establishment.
We are putting cases of men as upright as ever lived, differing on theological
questions of the highest importance and avowing that difference, are yet priests
and prelates of the same church. We therefore say, that on some points which Mr.
Gladstone himself thinks of vital importance, the Church has either not spoken
at all, or, what is for all practical purposes the same thing, has not spoken in
language to be understood even by honest and sagacious divines. The religion of
the Church of England is so far from exhibiting that unity of doctrine which Mr.
Gladstone represents as her distinguishing glory, that it is, in fact, a bundle
of religious systems without number. It comprises the religious system of Bishop
Tomline, and the religious system of John Newton, and all the religious systems
which lie between them. It comprises the religious system of Mr. Newman, and the
religious system of the Archbishop of Dublin, and all the religious systems
which lie between them. All these different opinions are held, avowed, preached,
printed, within the pale of the Church, by men of unquestioned integrity and
understanding.
Do we make this diversity a topic of reproach to the Church of England? Far from
it. We would oppose with all our power every attempt to narrow her basis? Would
to God that, a hundred and fifty years ago, a good king and a good primate had
possessed the power as well as the will to widen it! It was a noble enterprise,
worthy of William and of Tillotson. But what becomes of all Mr. Gladstone's
eloquent exhortations to unity? Is it not mere mockery to attach so much
importance to unity in form and name, where there is so little in substance, to
shudder at the thought of two Churches in alliance with one State, and to endure
with patience the spectacle of a hundred sects battling within one Church? And
is it not clear that Mr. Gladstone is bound, on all his own principles, to
abandon the defense of a Church in which unity is not found? Is it not clear
that he is bound to divide the House of Commons against every grant of money
which may be proposed for the clergy of the Established Church in the colonies?
He objects to the vote for Maynooth, because it is monstrous to pay one man to
teach truth, and another to denounce that truth as falsehood. But it is a mere
chance whether any sum which he votes for the English Church in any colony will
go to the maintenance of an Arminian or a Calvinist, of a man like Mr. Froude,
or of a man like Dr. Arnold. It is a mere chance, therefore, whether it will go
to support a teacher of truth, or one who will denounce that truth as falsehood.
This argument seems to us at once to dispose of all that part of Mr. Gladstone's
book which respects grants of public money to dissenting bodies. All such grants
he condemns. But surely, if it be wrong to give the money of the public for the
support of those who teach any false doctrine, it is wrong to give that money
for the support of the ministers of the Established Church. For it is quite
certain that, whether Calvin or Arminius be in the right, whether Laud or Burnet
be in the right, a great deal of false doctrine is taught by the ministers of
the Established Church. If it be said that the points on which the clergy of the
Church of England differ ought to be passed over, for the sake of the many
important points on which they agree, why may not the same argument be
maintained with respect to the other sects which hold, in common with the Church
of England, the fundamental doctrines of Christianity? The principle that a
ruler is bound in conscience to propagate religious truth, and to propagate no
religious doctrine which is untrue, is abandoned as soon as it is admitted that
a gentleman of Mr. Gladstone's opinions may lawfully vote the public money to a
chaplain whose opinions are those of Paley or of Simeon. The whole question then
becomes one of degree. Of course no individual and no government can justifiably
propagate error for the sake of propagating error. But both individuals and
governments must work with such machinery as they have; and no human machinery
is to be found which will impart truth without some alloy of error. We have
shown irrefragably, as we think, that the Church of England does not afford such
a machinery. The question then is this; with what degree of imperfection in our
machinery must we put up? And to this question we do not see how any general
answer can be given. We must be guided by circumstances. It would, for example,
be very criminal in a Protestant to contribute to the sending of Jesuit
missionaries among a Protestant population. But we do not conceive that a
Protestant would be to blame for giving assistance to Jesuit missionaries who
might be engaged in converting the Siamese to Christianity. That tares are mixed
with the wheat is matter of regret; but it is better that wheat and tares should
grow together than that the promise of the year should be blighted.
Mr. Gladstone, we see with deep regret, censures the British Government in India
for distributing a small sum among the Catholic priests who minister to the
spiritual wants of our Irish soldiers. Now, let us put a case to him. A
Protestant gentleman is attended by a Catholic servant, in a part of the country
where there is no Catholic congregation within many miles. The servant is taken
ill, and is given over. He desires, in great trouble of mind, to receive the
last sacraments of his Church. His master sends off a messenger in a chaise and
four, with orders to bring a confessor from a town at a considerable distance.
Here a Protestant lays out money for the purpose of causing religious
instruction and consolation to be given by a Catholic priest. Has he committed a
sin? Has he not acted like a good master and a good Christian? Would Mr.
Gladstone accuse him of "laxity of religious principle," of "confounding truth
with falsehood," of "considering the support of religion as a boon to an
individual, not as a homage to truth?" But how if this servant had, for the sake
of his master, undertaken a journey which removed him from the place where he
might easily have obtained religious attendance? How if his death were
occasioned by a wound received in defending his master? Should we not then say
that the master had only fulfilled a sacred obligation of duty? Now, Mr.
Gladstone himself owns that "nobody can think that the personality of the State
is more stringent, or entails stronger obligations, than that of the
individual." How then stands the case of the Indian Government? Here is a poor
fellow enlisted in Clare or Kerry, sent over fifteen thousand miles of sea,
quartered in a depressing and pestilential climate. He fights for the
Government; he conquers for it; he is wounded; he is laid on his pallet,
withering away with fever, under that terrible sun, without a friend near him.
He pines for the consolations of that religion which, neglected perhaps in the
season of health and vigor, now comes back to his mind, associated with all the
overpowering recollections of his earlier days, and of the home which he is
never to see again. And because the State for which he dies sends a priest of
his own faith to stand at his bedside, and to tell him, in language which at
once commands his love and confidence, of the common Father, of the common
Redeemer, of the common hope of immortality, because the State for which he dies
does not abandon him in his last moments to the care of heathen attendants, or
employ a chaplain of a different creed to vex his departing spirit with a
controversy about the Council of Trent, Mr. Gladstone finds that India presents
"a melancholy picture," and that there is "a large allowance of false principle"
in the system pursued there. Most earnestly do we hope that our remarks may
induce Mr. Gladstone to reconsider this part of his work, and may prevent him
from expressing in that high assembly, in which he must always be heard with
attention, opinions so unworthy of his character.
We have now said almost all that we think it necessary to say respecting Mr.
Gladstone's theory. And perhaps it would be safest for us to stop here. It is
much easier to pull down than to build up. Yet, that we may give Mr. Gladstone
his revenge, we will state concisely our own views respecting the alliance of
Church and State.
We set out in company with Warburton, and remain with him pretty sociably till
we come to his contract; a contract which Mr. Gladstone very properly designates
as a fiction. We consider the primary end of Government as a purely temporal
end, the protection of the persons and property of men.
We think that Government, like every other contrivance of human wisdom, from the
highest to the lowest, is likely to answer its main end best when it is
constructed with a single view to that end. Mr. Gladstone, who loves Plato, will
not quarrel with us for illustrating our proposition, after Plato's fashion,
from the most familiar objects. Take cutlery, for example. A blade which is
designed both to shave and to carve, will certainly not shave so well as a
razor, or carve so well as a carving-knife. An academy of painting, which should
also be a bank, would, in all probability, exhibit very bad pictures and
discount very bad bills. A gas company, which should also be an infant school
society, would, we apprehend, light the streets ill, and teach the children ill.
On this principle, we think that Government should be organized solely with a
view to its main end; and that no part of its efficiency for that end should be
sacrificed in order to promote any other end however excellent.
But does it follow from hence that Governments ought never to pursue any end
other than their main end? In no wise. Though it is desirable that every
institution should have a main end, and should be so formed as to be in the
highest degree efficient for that main end; yet if, without any sacrifice of its
efficiency for that end, it can pursue any other good end, it ought to do so.
Thus, the end for which a hospital is built is the relief of the sick, not the
beautifying of the street. To sacrifice the health of the sick to splendor of
architectural effect, to place the building in a bad air only that it may
present a more commanding front to a great public place, to make the wards
hotter or cooler than they ought to be, in order that the columns and windows of
the exterior may please the passers-by would be monstrous. But if, without any
sacrifice of the chief object, the hospital can be made an ornament to the
metropolis, it would be absurd not to make it so.
In the same manner, if a Government can, without any sacrifice of its main end,
promote any other good work, it ought to do so. The encouragement of the fine
arts, for example, is by no means the main end of Government; and it would be
absurd, in constituting a Government, to bestow a thought on the question,
whether it would be a Government likely to train Raphaels or Domenichinos. But
it by no means follows that it is improper for a Government to form a national
gallery of pictures. The same may be said of patronage bestowed on learned men,
of the publication of archives, of the collecting of libraries, menageries,
plants, fossils, antiques, of journeys and voyages for purposes of geographical
discovery or astronomical observation. It is not for these ends that Government
is constituted. But it may well happen that a Government may have at its command
resources which will enable it, without any injury to its main end, to pursue
these collateral ends far more effectually than any individual or any voluntary
association could do. If so, Government ought to pursue these collateral ends.
It is still more evidently the duty of Government to promote, always in
subordination to its main end, everything which is useful as a means for the
attaining of that main end. The improvement of steam navigation, for example, is
by no means a primary object of Government. But as steam vessels are useful for
the purpose of national defense, and for the purpose of facilitating intercourse
between distant provinces, and of thereby consolidating the force of the empire,
it may be the bounden duty of Government to encourage ingenious men to perfect
an invention which so directly tends to make the State more efficient for its
great primary end.
Now on both these grounds, the instruction of the people may with propriety
engage the care of the Government. That the people should be well educated, is
in itself a good thing; and the State ought therefore to promote this object, if
it can do so without any sacrifice of its primary object. The education of the
people, conducted on those principles of morality which are common to all the
forms of Christianity, is highly valuable as a means of promoting the main
object for which Government exists, and is on this ground well deserving the
attention of rulers. We will not at present go into the general question of
education; but will confine our remarks to the subject which is more immediately
before us, namely, the religious instruction of the people.
1 One question was, whether God had from eternity reprobated
certain persons; and why? The answer which contented the Archbishop was
"Affirmative, et quia voluit."
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