Carlton had opened the small church he was serving for Saints'-day
services during the Long Vacation; and not being in the way to have any
congregation, and the church at Horsley being closed except on Sundays,
he had asked his two pupils to help him in this matter, by walking over
with him on St. Matthew's day, which, as the season was fine, and the
walk far from a dull one, they were very glad to do. When church was
over Carlton had to attend a sick call which lay still farther from
Horsley, and the two young men walked back together.
"I did not know that Carlton was so much of a party man," said
Sheffield; "did not his reading the Athanasian Creed strike you?"
"That's no mark of party, surely," answered Charles.
"To read it on days like these, I think, _is_ a mark of party; it's
going out of the way."
Charles did not see how obeying in so plain a matter the clear direction
of the Prayer Book could be a party act.
"Direction!" said Sheffield, "as if the question were not, is that
direction now binding? the sense, the understanding of the Church of
this day determines its obligation."
"The _prima facie_ view of the matter," said Charles, "is, that they who
do but follow what the Prayer Book enjoins are of all people farthest
from being a party."
"Not at all," said Sheffield; "rigid adherence to old customs surely may
be the badge of a party. Now consider; ten years ago, before the study
of Church-history was revived, neither Arianism nor Athanasianism were
thought of at all, or, if thought of, they were considered as questions
of words, at least as held by most minds--one as good as the other."
"I should say so, too, in one sense," said Charles, "that is, I should
hope that numbers of persons, for instance, the unlearned, who were in
Arian communities spoke Arian language, and yet did not mean it. I think
I have heard that some ancient missionary of the Goths or Huns was an
Arian."
"Well, I will speak more precisely," said Sheffield: "an Oxford man,
some ten years since, was going to publish a history of the Nicene
Council, and the bookseller proposed to him to prefix an engraving of
St. Athanasius, which he had found in some old volume. He was strongly
dissuaded from doing so by a brother clergyman, not from any feeling of
his own, but because 'Athanasius was a very unpopular name among us.'"
"One swallow does not make a spring," said Charles.
"This clergyman," continued Sheffield, "was a friend of the most
High-Church writers of the day."
"Of course," said Reding, "there has always been a heterodox school in
our Church--I know that well enough--but it never has been powerful.
Your lax friend was one of them."
"I believe not, indeed," answered Sheffield; "he lived out of
controversy, was a literary, accomplished person, and a man of piety to
boot. He did not express any feeling of his own; he did but witness to a
fact, that the name of Athanasius was unpopular."
"So little was known about history," said Charles, "this is not
surprising. St. Athanasius, you know, did not write the Creed called
after him. It is possible to think him intemperate, without thinking the
Creed wrong."
"Well, then, again; there's Beatson, Divinity Professor; no one will
call him in any sense a party man; he was put in by the Tories, and
never has committed himself to any liberal theories in theology. Now, a
man who attended his private lectures assures me that he told the men,
'D'ye see,' said he, 'I take it, that the old Church-of-England mode of
handling the Creed went out with Bull. After Locke wrote, the old
orthodox phraseology came into disrepute.'"
"Well, perhaps he meant," said Charles, "that learning died away, which
was the case. The old theological language is plainly a learned
language; when fathers and schoolmen were not read, of course it would
be in abeyance; when they were read again, it has revived."
"No, no," answered Sheffield, "he said much more on another occasion.
Speaking of Creeds, and the like, 'I hold,' he said, 'that the majority
of the educated laity of our Church are Sabellians.'"
Charles was silent, and hardly knew what reply to make. Sheffield went
on: "I was present some years ago, when I was quite a boy, when a sort
of tutor of mine was talking to one of the most learned and orthodox
divines of the day, a man whose name has never been associated with
party, and the near relation and connexion of high dignitaries, about a
plan of his own for writing a history of the Councils. This good and
able man listened with politeness, applauded the project; then added, in
a laughing way, 'You know you have chosen just the dullest subject in
Church-history. Now the Councils begin with the Nicene Creed, and
embrace nearly all doctrinal subjects whatever.'"
"My dear Sheffield," said Charles, "you have fallen in with a particular
set or party of men yourself; very respectable, good men, I don't doubt,
but no fair specimens of the whole Church."
"I don't bring them as authorities," answered Sheffield, "but as
witnesses."
"Still," said Charles, "I know perfectly well, that there was a
controversy at the end of the last century between Bishop Horsley and
others, in which he brought out distinctly one part at least of the
Athanasian doctrine."
"His controversy was not a defence of the Athanasian Creed, I know
well," said Sheffield; "for the subject came into Upton's
Article-lecture; it was with Priestley; but, whatever it was, divines
would only think it all very fine, just as his 'Sermons on Prophecy.' It
is another question whether they would recognize the worth either of the
one or of the other. They receive the scholastic terms about the
Trinity just as they receive the doctrine that the Pope is Antichrist.
When Horsley says the latter, or something of the kind, good old
clergymen say, 'Certainly, certainly, oh yes, it's the old
Church-of-England doctrine,' thinking it right, indeed, to be
maintained, but not caring themselves to maintain it, or at most
professing it just when mentioned, but not really thinking about it from
one year's end to the other. And so with regard to the doctrine of the
Trinity, they say, 'the great Horsley,' 'the powerful Horsley;' they
don't indeed dispute his doctrine, but they don't care about it; they
look on him as a doughty champion, armed _cap-à-pie_, who has put down
dissent, who has cut off the head of some impudent non-protectionist, or
insane chartist, or spouter in a vestry, who, under cover of theology,
had run a tilt against tithes and church-rates."
"I can't think so badly of our present divines," said Charles; "I know
that in this very place there are various orthodox writers, whom no one
would call party men."
"Stop," said Sheffield, "understand me, I was not speaking _against_
them. I was but saying that these anti-Athanasian views were not
unfrequent. I have been in the way of hearing a good deal on the subject
at my private tutor's, and have kept my eyes about me since I have been
here. The Bishop of Derby was a friend of Sheen's, my private tutor, and
got his promotion when I was with the latter; and Sheen told me that he
wrote to him on that occasion, 'What shall I read? I don't know anything
of theology.' I rather think he was recommended, or proposed to read
Scott's Bible."
"It's easy to bring instances," said Charles, "when you have all your
own way; what you say is evidently all an _ex-parte_ statement."
"Take again Shipton, who died lately," continued Sheffield; "what a high
position he held in the Church; yet it is perfectly well known that he
thought it a mistake to use the word 'Person' in the doctrine of the
Trinity. What makes this stranger is, that he was so very severe on
clergymen (Tractarians, for instance) who evade the sense of the
Articles. Now he was a singularly honest, straightforward man; he
despised money; he cared nothing for public opinion; yet he was a
Sabellian. Would he have eaten the bread of the Church, as it is called,
for a day, unless he had felt that his opinions were not inconsistent
with his profession as Dean of Bath, and Prebendary of Dorchester? Is it
not plain that he considered the practice of the Church to have
modified, to have re-interpreted its documents?"
"Why," said Charles, "the practice of the Church cannot make black
white; or, if a sentence means yes, make it mean no. I won't deny that
words are often vague and uncertain in their sense, and frequently need
a comment, so that the teaching of the day has great influence in
determining their sense; but the question is, whether the
counter-teaching of every dean, every prebendary, every clergyman, every
bishop in the whole Church, could make the Athanasian Creed Sabellian; I
think not."
"Certainly not," answered Sheffield; "but the clergymen I speak of
simply say that they are not bound to the details of the Creed, only to
the great outline that there is _a_ Trinity."
"Great outline!" said Charles, "great stuff! an Unitarian would not deny
that. He, of course, believes in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; though he
thinks the Son a creature, and the Spirit an influence."
"Well, I don't deny," said Sheffield, "that if Dean Shipton was a sound
member of the Church, Dr. Priestley might have been also. But my doubt
is, whether, if the Tractarian school had not risen, Priestley might not
have been, had he lived to this time, I will not say a positively sound
member, but sound enough for preferment."
"_If_ the Tractarian school had not risen! that is but saying if our
Church was other than it is. What is that school but a birth, an
offspring of the Church? and if the Church had not given birth to one
party of men for its defence, it would have given birth to another."
"No, no," said Sheffield, "I assure you the old school of doctrine was
all but run out when they began; and I declare I wish they had let
things alone. There was the doctrine of the Apostolical Succession; a
few good old men were its sole remaining professors in the Church; and a
great ecclesiastical personage, on one occasion, quite scoffed at their
persisting to hold it. He maintained the doctrine went out with the
non-jurors. 'You are so few,' he said, 'that we can count you.'"
Charles was not pleased with the subject, on various accounts. He did
not like what seemed to him an attack of Sheffield's upon the Church of
England; and, besides, he began to feel uncomfortable misgivings and
doubts whether that attack was not well founded, to which he did not
like to be exposed. Accordingly he kept silence, and, after a short
interval, attempted to change the subject; but Sheffield's hand was in,
and he would not be balked; so he presently began again. "I have been
speaking," he said, "of the liberal section of our Church. There are
four parties in the Church. Of these the old Tory, or country party,
which is out-and-out the largest, has no opinion at all, but merely
takes up the theology or no-theology of the day, and cannot properly be
said to 'hold' what the Creed calls 'the Catholic faith.' It does not
deny it; it may not knowingly disbelieve it; but it gives no signs of
actually holding it, beyond the fact that it treats it with respect. I
will venture to say, that not a country parson of them all, from year's
end to year's end, makes once a year what Catholics call 'an act of
faith' in that special and very distinctive mystery contained in the
clauses of the Athanasian Creed."
Then, seeing Charles looked rather hurt, he added, "I am not speaking of
any particular clergyman here or there, but of the great majority of
them. After the Tory party comes the Liberal; which also dislikes the
Athanasian Creed, as I have said. Thirdly, as to the Evangelical; I know
you have one of the Nos. of the 'Tracts for the Times' about objective
faith. Now that tract seems to prove that the Evangelical party is
implicitly Sabellian, and is tending to avow that belief. This too has
been already the actual course of Evangelical doctrine both on the
Continent and in America. The Protestants of Geneva, Holland, Ulster,
and Boston have all, I believe, become Unitarians, or the like. Dr. Adam
Clarke too, the celebrated Wesleyan, held the distinguishing Sabellian
tenet, as Doddridge is said to have done before him. All this
considered, I do think I have made out a good case for my original
assertion, that at this time of day it is a party thing to go out of the
way to read the Athanasian Creed."
"I don't agree with you at all," said Charles; "you say a great deal
more than you have a warrant to do, and draw sweeping conclusions from
slender premisses. This, at least, is what it seems to me. I wish too
you would not so speak of 'making out a case.' It is as if these things
were mere topics for disputation. And I don't like your taking the wrong
side; you are rather fond of doing so."
"Reding," answered Sheffield, "I speak what I think, and ever will do
so; I will be no party man. I don't attempt, like Vincent, to unite
opposites. He is of all parties, I am of none. I think I see pretty well
the hollowness of all."
"O my dear Sheffield," cried Charles, in distress, "think what you are
saying; you don't mean what you say. You are speaking as if you thought
that belief in the Athanasian Creed was a mere party opinion."
Sheffield first was silent; then he said, "Well, I beg your pardon, if
I have said anything to annoy you, or have expressed myself
intemperately. But surely one has no need to believe what so many people
either disbelieve or disregard."
The subject then dropped; and presently Carlton overtook them on the
farmer's pony, which he had borrowed.