_PAN-ANGLICANISM_
It is an awful word. Our forefathers, from Shakespeare downwards,
ate pan-cakes, and trod the pantiles at Tunbridge Wells; but their
"pan" was purely English, and they linked it with other English
words. The freedom of the "Ecclesia Anglicana" was guaranteed by
the Great Charter, and "Anglicanism" became a theological term.
Then Johnson, making the most of his little Greek, began to talk
about a "pancratical" man, where we talk of an all-round athlete;
and, a little later, "Pantheist" became a favourite missile with
theologians who wished to abuse rival practitioners, but did not
know exactly how to formulate their charge. It was reserved for the
journalists of 1867 to form the terrible compound of two languages,
and, by writing of the "Pan-Anglican Synod," to prepare the way for
"Pan-Protestant" and "Pan-denominational." Just now the "Lively
Libertines" (as their detractors style the promoters of "Life and
Liberty") seem to be testing from their labours, and they might
profitably employ their leisure by reading the history of their
forerunners half a century ago.
The hideously named "Pan-Anglican Synod," which assembled at Lambeth
in September, 1867, and terminated its proceedings in the following
December, was a real movement in the direction of Life and Liberty
for the Church of England. The impulse came from the Colonies,
which, themselves enjoying the privilege of spiritual independence,
were generously anxious to coalesce at a time of trial with the
fettered Church at home. The immediate occasion of the movement
was the eccentricity of Bishop Colenso--"the arithmetical Bishop
who could not forgive Moses for having written a Book of Numbers."
The faith of some was seriously perturbed when they heard of a
Bishop who, as Matthew Arnold said, "had learnt among the Zulus
that only a certain number of people can stand in a doorway at
once, and that no man can eat eighty-eight pigeons a day; and who
tells us, as a consequence, that the Pentateuch is all fiction,
which, however, the author may very likely have composed without
meaning to do wrong, and as a work of poetry, like Homer's."
Certainly the tremors of a faith so lightly overset were justly
obnoxious to Arnold's ridicule; but Colenso's negations went deeper
than the doorway and the pigeons; and the faithful of his diocese,
being untrammelled by the State, politely dismissed him from his
charge. In England steady-going Christians had been not less perturbed
by that queer collection of rather musty discourses which was called
_Essays and Reviews_; and the Church of England had made an attempt
to rid itself, by synodical action, of all complicity in the dubious
doctrine. But the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council had justified
the essayists, and had done its best to uphold Colenso. By so doing, it
had, of course, delighted all Erastians; but Churchmen, whether at home
or abroad, who believed in the English Church as a spiritual society,
with a life of its own apart from all legal establishment, felt that
the time had come when this belief should be publicly proclaimed. In
February, 1866, the Anglican Bishops of Canada addressed a Memorial
to Dr. Longley, then Archbishop of Canterbury, requesting him to
summon a conference of all the Bishops of the Anglican Communion;
and, after some characteristic hesitation, this was done. A Letter of
Invitation was issued in February, 1867. The more dogged Erastians
held aloof; but those who conceived of the Church as a spiritual
society obeyed the summons; the "Conference of Bishops" assembled,
and the priceless word "Pan-Anglicanism" was added to the resources
of the language.
What did these good men do when they were come together? Not, it
must be admitted, very much. They prayed and they preached, and
debated and divided, and, in the matter of Colenso, quarrelled.
They issued a Pastoral Letter which, as Bishop Tait said, was "the
expression of essential agreement and a repudiation of Infidelity
and Romanism." If this had been the sole result of the Conference,
it would have been meagre enough; but under this official
ineffectiveness there had been a real movement towards "Life and
Liberty." The Conference taught the Established Bishops of England
and Ireland that the Bishops of Free Churches--Scottish, American,
Colonial--were at least as keen about religious work and as jealous
for the spiritual independence of the Christian society as the highly
placed and handsomely paid occupants of Lambeth and Bishopthorpe.
Bishop Hamilton of Salisbury (whom the Catholic-minded section of
the English Church regarded as their special champion) "thought
that we had much to learn from contact with the faith and vigour
of the American Episcopate"; and Bishop Wilberforce thus recorded
his judgment: "The Lambeth gathering was a very great success. Its
strongly anti-Erastian tone, rebuking the Bishop of London (Tait),
was quite remarkable. We are now sitting in Committee trying to
complete our work--agree to a voluntary Court of English Doctrinal
Appeal for the free Colonies of America. If we can carry this out,
we shall have erected a barrier of immense moral strength against
Privy Council latitudinarianism. My view is that God gives us the
opportunity, as at home latitudinarianism must spread, of encircling
the Home Church with a band of far more dogmatic truth-holding
communions who will act most strongly in favour of truth here.
I was in great measure the framer of the "Pan-Anglican" for this
purpose, and the result has abundantly satisfied me. The American
Bishops won golden opinions."
And so this modest effort in the direction of "Life and Liberty,"
which had begun amid obloquy and ridicule, gained strength with
each succeeding year. The Conference was repeated, with vastly
increased numbers and general recognition, in 1878, 1888, 1898, and
1908. The war makes the date of the next assemblage, as it makes
all things, doubtful; but already Churchmen, including some who have
hitherto shrunk in horror from the prospect of Disestablishment,
are beginning to look forward to the next Conference of Bishops
as to something which may be a decisive step in the march of the
English Church towards freedom and self-government. Men who have
been reared in a system of ecclesiastical endowments are apt to
cherish the very unapostolic belief that money is a sacred thing;
but even they are coming, though by slow degrees, to realize that the
Faith may be still more sacred. For the rest of us, the issue was
formulated by Gladstone sixty years ago: "You have our decision:
take your own; choose between the mess of pottage and the birthright
of the Bride of Christ."