priesthood, (which, as it was foretold of him, "as God, sitteth in the
temple of God, showing himself that he is God,") and to restore its
disfranchised members,--the laity,--to the discharge of their proper
duties in it, and to the consciousness of their paramount importance.
This is the point which I have dwelt upon in the XXXVIII^{th} Lecture,
and which is closely in connection with the point maintained in the
XL^{th}; and all who value the inestimable blessings of Christ's church
should labour in arousing the laity to a sense of their great share in
them. In particular, that discipline, which is one of the greatest of
those blessings, never can, and, indeed, never ought to be restored,
till the Church resumes its lawful authority, and puts an end to the
usurpation of its powers by the clergy. There is a feeling now awakened
amongst the lay members of our Church, which, if it can but be rightly
directed, may, by God's blessing, really arrive at something truer and
deeper than satisfied the last century, or than satisfied the last
seventeen centuries. Otherwise, whatever else may be improved, the laity
will take care that church discipline shall continue to slumber, and
they will best serve the church by doing so. Much may be done to spread
the knowledge of Christ's religion; new churches may be built; new
ministers appointed to preach the word and administer the sacraments;
those may hear who now cannot hear; many more sick persons may be
visited; many more children may receive religious instruction: all this
is good, and to be received with sincere thankfulness; but, with a
knowledge revealed to us of a still more excellent power in Christ's
church, and with the abundant promises of prophecy in our hands, can we
rest satisfied with the lesser and imperfect good, which strikes thrice
and stays? But, if the zeal of the lay members of our Church be directed
by the principles of Mr. Newman, then the result will be, not merely a
lesser good, but one fearfully mixed with evil--Christian religion
profaned by anti-christian fables, Christian holiness marred by
superstition and uncharitableness; Christian wisdom and Christian
sincerity scoffed at, reviled, and persecuted out of sight. This is
declared to us by the sure voice of experience; this was the fruit of
the spirit of priestcraft, with its accompaniments of superstitious
rites and lying traditions, in the last decline of the Jewish church;
this was the fruit of the same spirit, with the same accompaniments, in
the long decay of the Christian church; although, the indestructible
virtue of Christ's gospel was manifest in the midst of the evil, and
Christ, in every age and in every country, has been known with saving
power by some of his people, and his church, in her worst corruptions,
has taught many divinest truths, has inculcated many holiest virtues.
When the tide is setting strongly against us, we can scarcely expect to
make progress; it is enough if we do not drift along with it. Mr.
Newman's system is now at the flood; it is daily making converts; it is
daily swelled by many of those who neither love it nor understand it in
itself, but who hope to make it serve their purposes, or who like to
swim with the stream. A strong profession, therefore, of an opposite
system must expect, at the present moment, to meet with little favour;
nor, indeed, have I any hope of turning the tide, which will flow for
its appointed season, and its ebb does not seem to be at hand. But
whilst the hurricane rages, those exposed to it may well encourage one
another to hold fast their own foundations against it; and many are
exposed to it in whose welfare I naturally have the deepest interest,
and in whom old impressions may be supposed to have still so much force
that I may claim from them, at least, a patient hearing. I am anxious to
show them that Mr. Newman's system is to be opposed not merely on
negative grounds, as untrue, but as obstructing that perfect and
positive truth, that perfection of Christ's church, which the last
century, it may be, neglected, but which I value and desire as earnestly
as it can be valued and desired by any man alive. My great objection to
Mr. Newman's system is, that it destroys Christ's church, and sets up an
evil in its stead. We do not desire merely to hinder the evil from
occupying the ground, and to leave it empty; that has been, undoubtedly,
the misfortune, and partly the fault of Protestantism; but we desire to
build on the holy ground a no less holy temple, not out of our own
devices, but according to the teaching of Christ himself, who has given
us the outline, and told us what should be its purposes.
The true church of Christ would offer to every faculty of our nature its
proper exercise, and would entirely meet all our wants. No wise man
doubts that the Reformation was imperfect, or that in the Romish system
there were many good institutions, and practices, and feelings, which it
would be most desirable to restore amongst ourselves. Daily church
services, frequent communions, memorials of our Christian calling
continually presented to our notice, in crosses and way-side oratories;
commemorations of holy men, of all times and countries; the doctrine of
the communion of saints practically taught; religious orders, especially
of women, of different kinds, and under different rules, delivered only
from the snare and sin of perpetual vows; all these, most of which are
of some efficacy for good, even in a corrupt church, belong no less to
the true church, and would there be purely beneficial. If Mr. Newman's
system attracts good and thinking men, because it seems to promise them
all these things, which in our actual Church are not to be found, let
them remember, that these things belong to the perfect church no less
than to that of the Romanists and of Mr. Newman, and would flourish in
the perfect church far more healthily. Or, again, if any man admires Mr.
Newman's system for its austerities, if he regards fasting as a positive
duty, he should consider that these might be transferred also to the
perfect church, and that they have no necessary connexion with the
peculiar tenets of Mr. Newman. We know that the Puritans were taunted by
their adversaries for their frequent fasts, and the severity of their
lives; and they certainly were far enough from agreeing with Mr. Newman.
Whatever there is of good, or self-denying, or ennobling, in his system,
is altogether independent of his doctrine concerning the priesthood. It
is that doctrine which is the peculiarity of his system and of Romanism;
it is that doctrine which constitutes the evil of both, which
over-weighs all the good accidentally united with it, and makes the
systems, as such, false and anti-christian. Nor can any human being find
in this doctrine anything of a beneficial tendency either to his
intellectual, his moral, or his spiritual nature. If mere reverence be a
virtue, without reference to its object, let us, by all means, do
honour to the virtue of those who fell down to the stock of a tree; and
let us lament the harsh censure which charged them with "having a lie in
their right hand[10]."
[Footnote 10: The language which Mr. Newman and his friends have allowed
themselves to hold, in admiration of what they call reverential and
submissive faith, might certainly be used in defence of the lowest
idolatry; what they have dared to call rationalistic can plead such high
and sacred authority in its favour, that if I were to quote some of the
language of the "Tracts for the Times," and place by the side of it
certain passages from the New Testament, Mr. Newman and his friends
would appear to have been writing blasphemy. It seems scarcely possible
that they could have remembered what is said in St. Matthew xv. 9-20,
and who said it, when they have called it rationalism to deny a
spiritual virtue in things that are applied to the body.]
What does the true and perfect church want, that she should borrow from
the broken cisterns of idolatry? Holding all those truths in which the
clear voice of God's word is joined by the accordant confession of God's
people in all ages; holding all the means of grace of which she was
designed to be the steward--her common prayers, her pure preaching, her
uncorrupted sacraments, her free and living society, her wise and
searching discipline, her commemorations and memorials of God's mercy
and grace, whether shown in her Lord himself, or in his and her
members;--looking lovingly upon her elder sisters, the ancient churches,
and delighting to be in communion with them, as she hopes that her
younger sisters, the churches of later days, will delight to be in
communion with her;--what has she not, that Christ's bride should have?
what has she not, that Mr. Newman's system can give her? But because she
loves her Lord, and stands fast in his faith, and has been enlightened
by his truth, she will endure no other mediator than Christ, she will
repose her trust only on his word, she will worship in the light, and
will abhor the words, no less than the works, of darkness. Her sisters,
the elder churches, she loves and respects as she would be herself loved
and respected; but she will not, and may not, worship them, nor even,
for their sakes, believe error to be truth, or foolishness to be wisdom.
She dare not hope that she can be in all things a perfect guide and
example to the churches that shall come after her; as neither have the
churches before her been in all things a perfect guide and example to
herself. She would not impose her yoke upon future generations, nor will
she submit her own neck to the yoke of antiquity. She honours all men,
but makes none her idol; and she would have her own individual members
regard her with honour, but neither would she be an idol to them. She
dreads especially that sin of which her Lord has so emphatically warned
her--the sin against the Holy Ghost. She will neither lie against him by
declaring that he is where his fruits are not manifested; nor blaspheme
him, by saying that he is not where his fruits are. Rites and ordinances
may be vain, prophets may be false, miracles may be miracles of Satan;
but the signs of the Holy Spirit, truth and holiness, can never be
ineffectual, can never deceive, can never be evil; where they are, and
only where they are, there is God.
There are states of falsehood and wickedness so monstrous, that, to use
the language of Eastern mythology, the Destroyer God is greater than the
Creator or the Preserver, and no good can be conceived so great as the
destruction of the existing evil. But ordinarily in human affairs
destruction and creation should go hand in hand; as the evergreen shrubs
of our gardens do not cast their old leaves till the young ones are
ready to supply their place. Great as is the falsehood of Mr. Newman's
system, it would be but an unsatisfactory work to clear it away, if we
had no positive truth to offer in its room. But the thousands of good
men whom it has beguiled, because it professed to meet the earnest
craving of their minds for a restoration of Christ's church with power,
need not fear to open their eyes to its hollowness; like the false
miracles of fraud or sorcery, it is but the counterfeit of a real truth.
The restoration of the church, is, indeed, the best consummation of all
our prayers, and all our labours; it is not a dream, not a prospect to
be seen only in the remotest distance; it is possible, it lies very near
us; with God's blessing it is in the power of this very generation to
begin and make some progress in the work. If the many good, and wise,
and influential laymen of our Church would but awake to their true
position and duties, and would labour heartily to procure for the church
a living organization and an effective government, in both, of which the
laity should be essential members, then, indeed, the church would become
a reality[11]. This is not Erastianism, or rather, it is not what is
commonly cried down under that name; it is not the subjection of the
church to the state, which, indeed, would be a most miserable and most
unchristian condition; but it would be the deliverance of the church,
and its exaltation to its own proper sovereignty. The members of one
particular profession are most fit to administer a system in part, most
unfit to legislate for it or to govern it: we could ill spare the
ability and learning of our lawyers, but we surely should not wish to
have none but lawyers concerned even, in the administration of justice,
much less to have none but lawyers in the government or in parliament.
What is true of lawyers with regard to the state, is no less true of the
clergy with regard to the church; indispensable as ministers and
advisers, they cannot, without great mischief, act as sole judges, sole
legislators, sole governors. And this is a truth so palpable, that the
clergy, by pressing such a claim, merely deprive the church of its
judicial, legislative, and executive functions; whilst the common sense
of the church will not allow them to exercise these powers, and, whilst
they assert that no one else may exercise them, the result is, that they
are not exercised at all, and the essence of the church is destroyed.
[Footnote 11: The famous saying, "extra ecclesiam nulla salus," is, in
its idea, a most divine truth; historically and in fact it may be, and
often has been, a practical falsehood. If the truths of Christ's
religion were necessarily accessible only to the members of some visible
church, then it would be true always, inasmuch as to be out of the
church would then be the same thing as to be without Christ; and, as a
society, the church ought so to attract to itself all goodness, and by
its internal organization, so to encourage all goodness, that nothing
would be without its pale but extreme wickedness, or extreme ignorance;
and he who were voluntarily to forfeit its spiritual advantages, would
be guilty of moral suicide; so St. Paul calls the church the pillar and
ground of truth; that is, it was so in its purpose and idea; and he
therefore conjures Timothy to walk warily in it, and to take heed that
what ought to be the pillar and ground of truth should not be profaned
by fables, and so be changed into a pillar of falsehood. But to say
universally, as an historical fact, that "extra ecclesiam nulla salus,"
may be often to utter one of the worst of falsehoods. A ferry is set up
to transport men over an unfordable river, and it might be truly said
that "extra navem nulla salus;" there is no other safe way, speaking
generally, of getting over; but the ferryman has got the plague, and if
you go in the boat with him, you will catch it and die. In despair, a
man plunges into the water, and swims across; would not the ferryman be
guilty of a double falsehood who should call out to this man, "extra
navem nulla salus," insisting that he had not swum over, when he had,
and saying that his boat would have carried him safely, whereas it would
have killed him?]
The first step towards the restoration of the church seems to be the
revival of the order of deacons; which might be effected without any
other change in our present system than a repeal of all laws, canons, or
customs which prohibit a deacon from following a secular calling, which
confer on him any civil exemptions, or subject him to any civil
disqualifications. The Ordination Service, with the subscription to the
Articles, would remain perfectly unaltered; and as no deacon can hold
any benefice, it is manifest that the proposed measure would in no way
interfere with the rights or duties of the order of presbyters, or
priests, which would remain precisely what they are at present. But the
benefit in large towns would be enormous, if, instead of the present
system of district visiting by private individuals, excellent as that is
where there is nothing better, we could have a large body of deacons,
the ordained ministers of the church, visiting the sick, managing
charitable subscriptions, and sharing with their presbyter in those
strictly clerical duties, which now, in many cases, are too much for the
health and powers of the strongest. Yet a still greater advantage would
be found in the link thus formed between the clergy and laity by the
revival of an order appertaining in a manner to both. Nor would it be a
little thing that many who now become teachers in some dissenting
congregation, not because they differ from our Articles, or dislike our
Liturgy, but because they cannot afford to go to the universities, and
have no prospect of being maintained by the church, if they were to give
up their secular callings, would, in all human probability, be glad to
join the church, as deacons, and would thus be subject to her
authorities, and would be engaged in her service, instead of being
aliens to her, if not enemies.
When we look at the condition of our country: at the poverty and
wretchedness of so large a portion of the working classes; at the
intellectual and moral evils which certainly exist among the poor, but
by no means amongst the poor only; and when we witness the many partial
attempts to remedy these evils--attempts benevolent indeed and wise, so
far as they go, but utterly unable to strike to the heart of the
mischief; can any Christian doubt that here is the work for the church
of Christ to do; that none else can do it; and that with the blessing of
her Almighty Head she can? Looking upon the chaos around us, one power
alone can reduce it into order, and fill it with light and life. And
does he really apprehend the perfections and high calling of Christ's
church; does he indeed fathom the depths of man's wants, or has he
learnt to rise to the fulness of the stature of their divine remedy, who
comes forward to preach to us the necessity of apostolical succession?
Grant even that it was of divine appointment, still as it is
demonstrably and palpably unconnected with holiness, as it would be a
mere positive and ceremonial ordinance, it cannot be the point of most
importance to insist on; even if it be a sin to neglect this, there are
so many far weightier matters equally neglected, that it would be
assuredly no Christian prophesying which were to strive to direct our
chief attention to this. But the wholly unmoral character of this
doctrine, which if it were indeed of God, would make it a single
mysterious exception to all the other doctrines of the Gospel, is, God
be thanked, not more certain than its total want of external evidence;
the Scripture disclaims it, Christ himself condemns it.
I have written at considerable length: yet so vast is the subject, that
I may seem to some to have written superficially, and to have left my
statements without adequate support. I can only say that no one
paragraph has been written hastily, nor in fact is there one the
substance of which has not been for several years in my mind; indeed, in
many instances, not only the substance, but the proofs in detail have
been actually written: but to have inserted them here would have been
impracticable, as they would have been in themselves a volume. Neither
have I knowingly remained in ignorance of any argument which may have
been used in defence of Mr. Newman's system; I have always desired to
know what he and his friends say, and on what grounds they say it;
although, as I have not read the Tracts for the Times regularly, I may
have omitted something which it would have been important to notice.
Finally, in naming Mr. Newman as the chief author of the system which I
have been considering, I have in no degree wished to make the question
personal; but Mr. Percival's letter authorizes us to consider him as one
of the authors of it; and as I have never had any personal acquaintance
with him, I could mention his name with no shock to any private feelings
either in him or in myself. But I have spoken of him simply as the
maintainer of certain doctrines, not as maintaining them in any
particular manner, far less as actuated by any particular motives. I
believe him to be in most serious error; I believe his system to be so
destructive of Christ's church, that I earnestly pray, and would labour
to the utmost of my endeavours for its utter overthrow: but on the other
hand, I will not be tempted to confound the authors of the system with
the system itself; for I know that the most mischievous errors have been
promulgated by men who yet have been neither foolish nor wicked; and I
nothing doubt that there are many points in Mr. Newman, in which I might
learn truth from his teaching, and should be glad if I could come near
him in his practice.
NOTE.
In order to prevent the possibility of misunderstanding, it is proper to
repeat what has been often said by others, that the English word
"priest" has two significations,--the one according to its etymology,
through the French _prêtre_, or _prestre_, and the Latin _presbyterus_,
from the Greek [Greek: presbuteros]; in which sense it is used in our
Liturgy and Rubrics, and signifies merely "one belonging to the order of
Presbyters," as distinguished from the other two orders of bishops and
deacons. But the other signification of the word "priest," and which we
use, as I think, more commonly, is the same with the meaning of the
Latin word _sacerdos_, and the Greek word [Greek: iepeus], and means,
"one who stands as a mediator between God and the people, and brings
them to God by the virtue of certain ceremonial acts which he performs
for them, and which they could not perform for themselves without
profanation, because they are at a distance from God, and cannot, in
their own persons, venture to approach towards him." In this sense of
the word "priest," the term is not applied to the ministers of the
Christian church, either by the Scripture, or by the authorized
formularies of the Church of England; although, in the other sense, as
synonymous with Presbyters, it is used in our Prayer Book repeatedly. Of
course, not one word of what I have written is meant to deny the
lawfulness and importance of the order of Presbyters in the church; I
have only spoken against a priesthood, in the other sense of the word,
in which a "priest" means "a mediator between God and man;" in that
sense, in short, in which the word is not a translation of [Greek:
presbuteros], but [iereus].
LECTURE I.
* * * * *
GENESIS iii. 22.
_And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know
good and evil_.
This is declared to be man's condition after the Fall. I will not
attempt to penetrate into that which is not to be entered into, nor to
pretend to discover all that may be concealed beneath the outward, and
in many points clearly parabolical, form of the account of man's
temptation and sin. But that condition to which his sin brought him is
our condition; with that, undoubtedly, we are concerned; that must be
the foundation of all sound views of human nature; the double fact
employed in the word fall is of the last importance; the fact on the one
hand of our present nature being evil, the fact on the other hand that
this present nature is not our proper nature; that the whole business of
our lives is to cast it off, and to return to that better and holy
nature, which, in truth, although not in fact, is the proper nature
of man.
All individual experience, then, and all history begins in something
which is evil; all our course, whether as individuals or as nations, is
a progress, an advance, a leaving behind us something bad, and a going
forwards towards something that is good. But individual experience, and
history apart from Christianity, would make us regard this progress as
fearfully uncertain. Clear it is that we are in an evil case; we have
lost our way; we are like men who are bewildered in those endless
forests of reeds which line some of the great American rivers; if we
stay where we are, the venomous snakes may destroy us; or the deadly
marsh air when night comes on will be surely fatal; it is death to
remain, but yet if we move, we know not what way will lead us out, and
it may be that, while seeming to advance, we shall but be going round
and round, and shall at last find ourselves hard by the place from which
we set out in the beginning. Nay, we may even feel a doubt,--a doubt, I
say, though not a reasonable belief,--but a doubt which at times would
press us sorely, whether the tangled thicket in which we are placed has
any end at all; whether our fond notions of a clear and open space, a
pure air, and a fruitful and habitable country, are not altogether
merely imaginary; whether the whole world be not such a region of death
as the spot in which we are actually prisoned; whether there remains any
thing for us, but to curse our fate, and lie down and die. Under such
circumstances, although we should admire the spirit which hoped against
hope; which would make an effort for deliverance; which would, at any
rate, flee from the actual evil, although, other evil might receive him
after all his struggles; yet we could forgive those who yielded at once
to their fate, and who sat down quietly to wait for their death, without
the unavailing labour of a struggle to avoid it.