Since writing my notes on Letter VI., in which Mr. Ruskin gives such
vehement expression to his desire to see the ancient discipline of the
Church restored, I have in conversation with himself learned this to be
one of the objects he has most at heart in writing these letters; and I
have also read in the Life of Bishop Selwyn, by the Rev. H. W. Tucker
(vol. i., p. 241) that admirable prelate's view of this disregarded
question. I believe Selwyn to have been the greatest uninspired
missionary since the days of St. Paul (if indeed we can with truth
consider so great a man wholly uninspired). But the great Bishop of the
South Seas, in the charge from which copious extracts are there given,
distinctly recommends the revival of spiritual discipline and the
censures of the Church upon unrepenting offenders. He refers for
authority to apostolic example and precept, and to the discipline
rubrics of the Communion Service, and adds the undeniable fact that our
Anglican communion is the only branch of the Christian Church where such
discipline is wanting.
I must ask leave to refer my readers to Mr. Tucker's book for the
grounds in detail of the Bishop's wishes. I am not aware that any
English prelate has ventured upon so hazardous an experiment; one, I
should rather say, so certain to fail disastrously. The infancy of the
Christian Church, and the Divine guidance directly exercised, rendered
such discipline in the first centuries both practicable and
effective.[15] But I do not remember that any parish priest of the
Reformed Church has ever attempted to enforce the Communion rubrics,
except, as we have learned from the public papers, in recent times, with
disastrous consequences to the promoters. And what kind of wickedness is
to be so visited? To prove drunkenness, or impurity, or fraudulent
practices, or false doctrine (Canon 109), a judicial inquiry must be
resorted to. Rebukes for lesser offences would certainly lead to
disputes, if not even to recrimination! The irresistible circumstances
of the age would entirely defeat any such endeavours. In towns,
parochial limits are practically unknown or ignored, and families, or
individuals, attend whatever church or chapel they please, no one
preventing them, thus making all exercise of sacerdotal authority
impracticable. In the country, even where only the parish church is
within reach, it is highly probable that an offender would meet priestly
excommunication by the easy expedient of cutting himself off from
communication with his clergyman and his church; and even if he did not,
it would be a very new state of things if the sentence were received
with submission on the part of the offender, and acquiescence on that of
the congregation.
[15] As these sheets are passing through the press, I happen to
meet with these words of Bishop Wilberforce:--"The more I have
thought over the matter, the more it seems to me that it was
providentially intended that discipline, in the strictest sense of
that word, should be the restraint of the early Church, and that it
should gradually die out as the Church approached maturity, or
rather turn from a formal and external rule to an inner work in the
spirit--should run into the opening of God's Word and its
application to the individual soul and life."--_Life_, vol. i., p.
230.
In short, the thing is simply impossible; and I do not find that even
Bishop Selwyn himself visited immorality with ecclesiastical censures,
or supported his clergy in doing so; and I am using the word
"immorality" in its full and proper sense, and not with that restricted
meaning which confines it to a particular sin. It is true, as he says,
that our Church stands alone in refraining from the exercise of such
power. But in other religious bodies, the discretionary power to use
such dangerous weapons is not left to individuals however gifted. It
rests in a constituted body, on whom the whole responsibility would lie.
But the isolation of the English clergyman in his church and parish
forbids him thus to risk his whole usefulness and his social existence.
Who would confirm him in his judgment? Who would stand by him in the
troubles which he would assuredly entail upon himself? Would his
churchwardens, his rural dean, his archdeacon, or his bishop? I think
there would be little comfort to be found in any of these quarters.