ST. PAUL & PROTESTANTISM
"We often read the Scripture without comprehending its full
meaning; however, let us not be discouraged. The light, in God's
good time, will break out, and disperse the darkness; and we
shall see the mysteries of the Gospel."
BISHOP WILSON.
"With them (the Puritans) nothing is more familiar than to plead
in their causes _the Law of God, the Word of the Lord_; who
notwithstanding, when they come to allege what word and what law
they mean, their common ordinary practice is to quote
by-speeches, and to urge them as if they were written in most
exact form of law. What is to add to the Law of God if this be
not?"
HOOKER.
"It will be found at last, that unity, and the peace of the
Church, will conduce more to the saving of souls, than the most
specious sects, varnished with the most pious, specious
pretences."
BISHOP WILSON.
* * * * *
ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM
_WITH AN ESSAY ON PURITANISM AND
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND_
BY
MATTHEW ARNOLD
FORMERLY PROFESSOR OF POETRY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
AND FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE
_THIRD EDITION_
LONDON
SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE
1875
(_The right of translation is reserved_)
* * * * *
PREFACE.
(1870.)
The essay following the treatise on St. Paul and Protestantism, was
meant to clear away offence or misunderstanding which had arisen out of
that treatise. There still remain one or two points on which a word of
explanation may be useful, and to them this preface is addressed.
The general objection, that the scheme of doctrine criticised by me is
common to both Puritanism and the Church of England, and does not
characterise the one more essentially than the other, has been removed,
I hope, by the concluding essay. But it is said that there is, at
any rate, a large party in the Church of England,--the so-called
_Evangelical_ party,--which holds just the scheme of doctrine I have
called Puritan; that this large party, at least, if not the whole Church
of England, is as much a stronghold of the distinctive Puritan tenets as
the Nonconformists are; and that to tax the Nonconformists with these
tenets, and to say nothing about the Evangelical clergy holding them
too, is injurious and unfair.
The Evangelical party in the Church of England we must always,
certainly, have a disposition to treat with forbearance, inasmuch as
this party has so strongly loved what is indeed the most loveable of
things,--religion. They have also avoided that unblessed mixture of
politics and religion by which both politics and religion are spoilt.
This, however, would not alone have prevented our making them jointly
answerable with the Puritans for that body of opinions which calls
itself Scriptural Protestantism, but which is, in truth, a perversion of
St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans. But there is this difference between
the Evangelical party in the Church of England and the Puritans outside
her;--the Evangelicals have not added to the first error of holding this
unsound body of opinions, the second error of separating for them. They
have thus, as we have already noticed, escaped the mixing of politics
and religion, which arises directly and naturally out of this separating
for opinions. But they have also done that which we most blame
Nonconformity for not doing;--they have left themselves in the way of
development. Practically they have admitted that the Christian Church is
built, not on the foundation of Lutheran and Calvinist dogmas, but on
the foundation: _Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart
from iniquity._[1] Mr. Ryle or the Dean of Ripon may have as erroneous
notions as to what _truth_ and _the gospel_ really is, as Mr. Spurgeon
or the President of the Wesleyan Conference; but they do not tie
themselves tighter still to these erroneous notions, nor do their best
to cut themselves off from outgrowing them, by resolving _to have no
fellowship with the man of sin_ who holds different notions. On the
contrary, they are worshippers in the same Church, professors of the
same faith, ministers of the same confraternity, as men who hold that
their _Scriptural Protestantism_ is all wrong, and who hold other
notions of their own quite at variance with it. And thus they do homage
to an ideal of Christianity which is larger, higher, and better than
either their notions or those of their opponents, and in respect of
which both their notions and those of their opponents are inadequate;
and this admission of the relative inadequacy of their notions is itself
a stage towards the future admission of their positive inadequacy.
[Footnote 1: II _Timothy_, ii, 19.]
In fact, the popular Protestant theology, which we have criticised as
such a grave perversion of the teaching of St. Paul, has not in the
so-called Evangelical party of the Church of England its chief centre
and stronghold. This party, which, following in the wake of Wesley and
others, so felt in a day of general insensibility the power and comfort
of the Christian religion, and which did so much to make others feel
them, but which also adopted and promulgated a scientific account so
inadequate and so misleading of the religion which attracted it,--this
great party has done its work, and is now undergoing that law of
transformation and development which obtains in a national Church. The
power is passing from it to others, who will make good some of the
aspects of religion which the Evangelicals neglected, and who will then,
in their turn, from the same cause of the scientific inadequacy of their
conception of Christianity, change and pass away. The Evangelical clergy
no longer recruits itself with success, no longer lays hold on such
promising subjects as formerly. It is losing the future and feels that
it is losing it. Its signs of a vigorous life, its gaiety and audacity,
are confined to its older members, too powerful to lose their own
vigour, but without successors to whom to transmit it. It was impossible
not to admire the genuine and rich though somewhat brutal humour of the
Dean of Ripon's famous similitude of the two lepers.[2] But from which
of the younger members of the Evangelical clergy do such strokes now
come? The best of their own younger generation, the soldiers of their
own training, are slipping away from them; and he who looks for the
source whence popular Puritan theology now derives power and
perpetuation, will not fix his eyes on the Evangelical clergy of the
Church of England.
[Footnote 2: In a letter to the _Times_ respecting Dr. Pusey and Dr.
Temple, during the discussion caused by Dr. Temple's appointment to
the see of Exeter. Dr. Temple was the total leper, so evidently a
leper that all men would instinctively avoid him, and he ceased to
be dangerous; Dr. Pusey was the partial leper, less deeply tainted,
but on that very account more dangerous, because less likely to
terrify people from coming near him. A piece of polemical humour,
racy, indeed, but hardly urbane, and still less Christian!]
Another point where a word of explanation seems desirable is the
objection taken on a kind of personal ground to the criticism of St.
Paul's doctrine which we have attempted. 'What!' it is said, 'if this
view of St. Paul's meaning, so unlike the received view, were the true
one, do you suppose it would have been left for you to discover it? Are
you wiser than the hundreds of learned people who for generation after
generation have been occupying themselves with St. Paul and little else?
Has it been left for you to bring in a new religion and found a new
church?' Now on this line of expostulation, which, so far as it draws
from unworthiness of ours its argument, appears to have, no doubt, great
force, there are three remarks to be offered. In the first place, even
if the version of St. Paul which we propound were both new and true, yet
we do not, on that account, make of it a new religion or set up a new
church for its sake. That would be _separating for opinions_, heresy,
which is just what we reproach the Nonconformists with. In the seventh
century, there arose near the Euphrates a sect called Paulicians, who
professed to form themselves on the pure doctrine of St. Paul, which
other Christians, they said, had misunderstood and corrupted. And we, I
suppose, having discovered how popular Protestantism perverts St. Paul,
are expected to try and make a new sect of Paulicians on the strength of
this discovery; such being just the course which our Puritan friends
would themselves eagerly take in like case. But the Christian Church is
founded, not on a correct speculative knowledge of the ideas of Paul,
but on the much surer ground: _Let every one that nameth the name of
Christ depart from iniquity_; and, holding this to be so, we might
change the current strain of doctrinal theology from one end to the
other, without, on that account, setting up any new church or bringing
in any new religion.
In the second place, the version we propound of St. Paul's line of
thought is not new, is not of our discovering. It belongs to the
'Zeit-Geist,' or _time-spirit_, it is in the air, and many have long
been anticipating it, preparing it, setting forth this and that part of
it, till there is not a part, probably, of all we have said, which has
not already been said by others before us, and said more learnedly and
fully than we can say it. All we have done is to take it as a whole, and
give a plain, popular, connected exposition of it; for which, perhaps,
our notions about culture, about the many sides to the human spirit,
about making these sides help one another instead of remaining enemies
and strangers, have been of some advantage. For most of those who read
St. Paul diligently are Hebraisers; they regard little except the
Hebraising impulse in us and the documents which concern it. They have
little notion of letting their consciousness play on things freely,
little ear for the voice of the 'Zeit-Geist;' and they are so immersed
in an order of thoughts and words which are peculiar, that, in the broad
general order of thoughts and words, which is the life of popular
exposition, they are not very much at home.
Thirdly, and in the last place, we by no means put forth our version of
St. Paul's line of thought as true, in the same fashion as Puritanism
put forth its _Scriptural_ _Protestantism_, or _gospel_, as true. Their
truth the Puritans exhibit as a sort of cast-iron product, rigid,
definite, and complete, which they have got once for all, and which can
no longer have anything added to it or anything withdrawn from it. But
of our rendering of St. Paul's thought we conceive rather as of a
product of nature, which has grown to be what it is and which will grow
more; which will not stand just as we now exhibit it, but which will
gain some aspects which we now fail to show in it, and will drop some
which we now give it; which will be developed, in short, farther, just
in like manner as it has reached its present stage by development.
Thus we present our conceptions, neither as something quite new nor as
something quite true; nor yet as any ground, even supposing they were
quite new and true, for a separate church or religion. But so far they
are, we think, new and true, and a fruit of sound development, a genuine
product of the 'Zeit-Geist,' that their mere contact seems to make the
old Puritan conceptions look unlikely and indefensible, and begin a sort
of re-modelling and refacing of themselves. Let us just see how far this
change has practically gone.
The formal and scholastic version of its theology, Calvinist or
Arminian, as given by its seventeenth-century fathers, and enshrined in
the trust-deeds of so many of its chapels,--of this, at any rate, modern
Puritanism is beginning to feel shy. Take the Calvinist doctrine of
election. 'By God's decree a certain number of angels and men are
predestinated, out of God's mere free grace and love, without any
foresight of faith or good works in them, to everlasting life; and
others foreordained, according to the unsearchable counsel of his will,
whereby he extends or withholds mercy as he pleases, to everlasting
death.' In that scientific form, at least, the doctrine of election
begins to look dubious to the Calvinistic Puritan, and he puts it a good
deal out of sight. Take the Arminian doctrine of justification. 'We
could not expect any relief from heaven out of that misery under which
we lie, were not God's displeasure against us first pacified and our
sins remitted. This is the signal and transcendent benefit of our free
justification through the blood of Christ, that God's offence justly
conceived against us for our sins (which would have been an eternal bar
and restraint to the efflux of his grace upon us) being removed, the
divine grace and bounty may freely flow forth upon us.' In that
scientific form, the doctrine of justification begins to look less
satisfactory to the Arminian Puritan, and he tends to put it out of
sight.
The same may be said of the doctrine of election in its plain popular
form of statement also. 'I hold,' says Whitefield, in the forcible style
which so took his hearers' fancy,--'I hold that a certain number are
elected from eternity, and these must and shall be saved, and the rest
of mankind must and shall be damned.' A Calvinistic Puritan now-a-days
must be either a fervid Welsh Dissenter, or a strenuous Particular
Baptist in some remote place in the country, not to be a little
staggered at this sort of expression. As to the doctrine of
justification in its current, popular form of statement, the case is
somewhat different. 'My own works,' says Wesley, 'my own sufferings, my
own righteousness, are so far from reconciling me to an offended God, so
far from making any atonement for the least of those sins which are more
in number than the hairs of my head, that the most specious of them need
an atonement themselves; that, having the sentence of death in my heart
and nothing in or of myself to plead, I have no hope but that of being
justified freely through the redemption that is in Jesus. The faith I
want is a sure trust and confidence in God, that through the merits of
Christ my sins are forgiven and I reconciled to the favour of God.
Believe and thou shalt be saved! He that believeth is passed from death
to life. Faith is the free gift of God, which he bestows not on those
who are worthy of his favour, not on such as are previously holy and so
fit to be crowned with all the blessings of his goodness, but on the
ungodly and unholy, who till that hour were fit only for everlasting
damnation. Look for sanctification just as you are, as a poor sinner
that has nothing to pay, nothing to plead but _Christ died_.'
Deliverances of this sort, which in Wesley are frequent and in Wesley's
followers are unceasing, still, no doubt, pass current everywhere with
Puritanism, are expected as of course, and find favour; they are just
what Puritans commonly mean by _Scriptural Protestantism, the truth, the
gospel-feast_. Nevertheless they no longer quite satisfy; the better
minds among Puritans try instinctively to give some fresh turn or
development to them; they are no longer, to minds of this order, an
unquestionable word and a sure stay; and from this point to their final
transformation the course is certain. The predestinarian and solifidian
dogmas, for the very sake of which our Puritan churches came into
existence, begin to feel the irresistible breath of the 'Zeit-Geist;'
some of them melt quicker, others slower, but all of them are doomed.
Under the eyes of this generation Puritan Dissent has to execute an
entire change of front, and to present us with a new reason for its
existing. What will that new reason be?
There needs no conjuror to tell us. It will be the Rev. Mr. Conder's
reason, which we have quoted in our concluding essay. It will be
Scriptural Protestantism in _church-order_, rather than Scriptural
Protestantism in _church-doctrine_. 'Congregational Nonconformists can
never be incorporated into an organic union with Anglican Episcopacy,
because there is not even the shadow of an outline of it in the New
Testament, and it is our assertion and profound belief that Christ and
the Apostles have given us all the laws that are necessary for the
constitution and government of the Church.' This makes church-government
not a secondary matter of form, growth, and expediency, but a matter of
the essence of Christianity and ordained in Scripture. Expressly set
forth in Scripture it is not; so it has to be gathered from Scripture by
collection, and every one gathers it in his own way. Unity is of no
great importance; but that every man should live in a church-order which
he judges to be scriptural, is of the greatest importance. This brings
us to Mr. Miall's standard-maxim: _The Dissidence of Dissent, and the
Protestantism of the Protestant religion_! The more freely the sects
develop themselves, the better. The Church of England herself is but
_the dominant sect_; her pretensions to bring back the Dissenters within
her pale are offensive and ridiculous. What we ought to aim at is
perfect equality, and that the other sects should balance her.
On the old, old subject of the want of historic and philosophic sense
shown by those who would make church-government a matter of scriptural
regulation, I say nothing at present. A Wesleyan minister, the Rev. Mr.
Willey, said the other day at Leeds: 'He did not find anything in either
the Old or New Testament to the effect that Christian ministers should
become State-servants, like soldiers or excisemen.' He might as well
have added that he did not find there anything to the effect that they
should wear braces! But on this point I am not here going to enlarge.
What I am now concerned with is the relation of this new ground of
existence, which more and more the Puritan Churches take and will take
as they lose their old ground, to the Christian religion. In the speech
which Mr. Winterbotham[3] made on the Education Bill, a speech which I
had the advantage of hearing, there were uncommon facilities supplied
for judging of this relation; indeed that able speech presented a
striking picture of it.
[Footnote 3: Mr. Winterbotham has since died. Nothing in my remarks
on his speech need prevent me from expressing here my high esteem
for his character, accomplishments, oratorical faculty and general
promise, and my sincere regret for his loss.]
And what a picture it was, good heavens! The Puritans say they love
righteousness, and they are offended with us for rejoining that the
righteousness of which they boast is the righteousness of the earlier
Jews of the Old Testament, which consisted mainly in smiting the Lord's
enemies and their own under the fifth rib. And we say that the newer and
specially Christian sort of righteousness is something different from
this; that the Puritans are, and always have been, deficient in the
specially Christian sort of righteousness; that men like St. Francis of
Sales, in the Roman Catholic Church, and Bishop Wilson, in the Church of
England, show far more of it than any Puritans; and that St. Paul's
signal and eternally fruitful growth in righteousness dates just from
his breach with the Puritans of his day. Let us revert to Paul's list of
fruits of the spirit, on which we have so often insisted in the pages
which follow: _love_, _joy_, _peace_, _long-suffering_, _kindness_,
_goodness_, _faith_, _mildness_, _self-control_.[4] We keep to this
particular list for the sake of greater distinctness; but St. Paul has
perpetually lists of the kind, all pointing the same way, and all
showing what he meant by Christian righteousness, what he found
specially in Christ. They may all be concluded in two qualities, the
qualities which Jesus Christ told his disciples to learn of him, the
qualities in the name of which, as specially Christ's qualities, Paul
adjured his converts. 'Learn of me,' said Jesus, '_that I am mild and
lowly in heart_.' 'I beseech you,' said Paul, '_by the mildness and
gentleness of Christ_.'[5] The word which our Bibles translate by
'gentleness' means more properly 'reasonableness with sweetness,' 'sweet
reasonableness.' 'I beseech you by _the mildness and sweet
reasonableness of Christ_.' This mildness and sweet reasonableness it
was, which, stamped with the individual charm they had in Jesus Christ,
came to the world as something new, won its heart and conquered it.
Every one had been asserting his ordinary self and was miserable; to
forbear to assert one's ordinary self, to place one's happiness in
mildness and sweet reasonableness, was a revelation. As men followed
this novel route to happiness, a living spring opened beside their way,
the spring of charity; and out of this spring arose those two heavenly
visitants, Charis and Irene, _grace_ and _peace_, which enraptured the
poor wayfarer, and filled him with a joy which brought all the world
after him. And still, whenever these visitants appear, as appear for a
witness to the vitality of Christianity they daily do, it is from the
same spring that they arise; and this spring is opened solely by the
mildness and sweet reasonableness which forbears to assert our ordinary
self, nay, which even takes pleasure in effacing it.
[Footnote 4: _Gal._, v, 22, 23.]
[Footnote 5: +dia tês praütêtos kai epieikeias tou Christou.+
II _Cor._, x, 1.]
And now let us turn to Mr. Winterbotham and the Protestant Dissenters.
He interprets their very inner mind, he says; that which he declares in
their name, they are all feeling, and would declare for themselves if
they could. '_There was a spirit of watchful jealousy on the part of the
Dissenters, which made them prone to take offence; therefore statesmen
should not introduce the Established Church into all the institutions of
the country._' That is positively the whole speech! 'Strife, jealousy,
wrath, contentions, backbitings,'[6]--we know the catalogue. And the
Dissenters are, by their own confession, so full of these, and the very
existence of an organisation of Dissent so makes them a necessity, that
the State is required to frame its legislation in consideration of them!
Was there ever such a confession made? Here are people existing for the
sake of a religion of which the essence is mildness and sweet
reasonableness, and the forbearing to assert our ordinary self; and they
declare themselves so full of the very temper and habits against which
that religion is specially levelled, that they require to have even the
occasion of forbearing to assert their ordinary self removed out of
their way, because they are quite sure they will never comply with it!
[Footnote 6: II _Cor._, xii, 20.]
Never was there a more instructive comment on the blessings of
separation, which we are so often invited by separatists to admire. Why
does not Dissent forbear to assert its ordinary self, and help to win
the world to the mildness and sweet reasonableness of Christ, without
this vain contest about machinery? Why does not the Church? is the
Dissenter's answer. What an answer for a Christian! We are to defer
giving up our ordinary self until our neighbour shall have given up his;
that is, we are never to give it up at all. But I will answer the
question on more mundane grounds. Why are we to be more blamed than the
Church for the strife arising out of our rival existences? asks the
Dissenter. Because the Church cannot help existing, and you can!
Therefore, _contra ecclesiam nemo pacificus_, as Baxter himself said in
his better moments. Because the Church is there; because strife,
jealousy, and self-assertion are sure to come with breaking off from
her; and because strife, jealousy, and self-assertion are the very
miseries against which Christianity is firstly levelled;--therefore we
say that a Christian is inexcusable in breaking with the Church, except
for a departure from the primal ground of her foundation: _Let every one
that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity_.
The clergyman,--poor soul!--cannot help being the parson of the parish.
He is there like the magistrate; he is a national officer with an
appointed function. If one or two voluntary performers, dissatisfied
with the magisterial system, were to set themselves up in each parish of
the country, called themselves magistrates, drew a certain number of
people to their own way of thinking, tried differences and gave
sentences among their people in the best fashion they could, why,
probably the established magistrate would not much like it, the leading
people in the parish would not much like it, and the newcomers would
have mortifications and social estrangements to endure. Probably the
established magistrate would call them interlopers; probably he would
count them amongst his difficulties. On the side of the newcomers 'a
spirit of watchful jealousy,' as Mr. Winterbotham says, would thus be
created. The public interest would suffer from the ill blood and
confusion prevailing. The established magistrate might naturally say
that the newcomers brought the strife and disturbance with them. But who
would not smile at these lambs answering: 'Away with that wolf the
established magistrate, and all ground for jealousy and quarrel between
us will disappear!'
And it is a grievance that the clergyman talks of Dissent as one of the
spiritual hindrances in his parish, and desires to get rid of it! Why,
by Mr. Winterbotham's own showing, the Dissenters live 'in a spirit of
watchful jealousy,' and this temper is as much a spiritual
hindrance,--nay, in the view of Christianity it is even a more direct
spiritual hindrance,--than drunkenness or loose living. Christianity is,
first and above all, a temper, a disposition; and a disposition just the
opposite to 'a spirit of watchful jealousy.' Once admit a spirit of
watchful jealousy, and Christianity has lost its virtue; it is impotent.
All the other vices it was meant to keep out may rush in. Where there is
jealousy and strife among you, asks St. Paul, _are ye not carnal_?[7]
are ye not still in bondage to your mere lower selves? But from this
bondage Christianity was meant to free us; therefore, says he, get rid
of what causes divisions, and strife, and 'a spirit of watchful
jealousy.' 'I exhort you by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that ye
all speak the same thing, and that there be not divisions among you, but
that ye all be perfectly joined in the same mind and the same
judgment.'[8]
[Footnote 7: I _Cor._, iii, 3.]
[Footnote 8: I _Cor._, i, 10.]
Well, but why, says the Dissenting minister, is the clergyman to impress
St. Paul's words upon me rather than I upon the clergyman? Because the
clergyman is the one minister of Christ in the parish who did not invent
himself, who cannot help existing. He is not asserting his ordinary self
by being there; he is placed there on public duty. He is charged with
teaching the lesson of Christianity, and the head and front of this
lesson is to get rid of 'a spirit of watchful jealousy,' which,
according to the Dissenter's own showing, is the very spirit which
accompanies Dissent. How he is to get rid of it, how he is to win souls
to the mildness and sweet reasonableness of Christ, it is for his own
conscience to tell him. Probably he will best do it by never speaking
against Dissent at all, by treating Dissenters with perfect cordiality
and as if there was not a point of dispute between them. But that, so
long as he exists, it is his duty to get rid of it, to win souls to the
unity which is its opposite, is clear. It is not the Bishop of
Winchester[9] who classes Dissent, full of 'a spirit of watchful
jealousy,' along with spiritual hindrances like beer-shops,--a pollution
of the spirit along with pollutions of the flesh;[10] it is St. Paul.
It is not the clergyman who is chargeable with wishing to 'stamp out'
this spirit; it is the Christian religion.
[Footnote 9: The late Bishop Wilberforce.]
[Footnote 10: I _Cor._, vii, 1.]
But what is to prevent the Dissenting minister from being joined with
the clergyman in the same public function, and being his partner instead
of his rival? Episcopal ordination.[11] If I leave the service of a
private company, and enter the public service, I receive admission at
the hands of the public officer designated to give it me. Sentiment and
the historic sense, to say nothing of the religious feeling, will
certainly put more into ordination than this, though not precisely what
the Bishop of Winchester, perhaps, puts; this which we have laid down,
however, is really all which the law of the land puts there. A bishop is
a public officer. Why should I trouble myself about the name his office
bears? The name of his office cannot affect the service or my labour in
it. Ah, but, says Mr. Winterbotham, he holds opinions which I do not
share about the sort of character he confers upon me! What can that
matter, unless he compels you, too, to profess the same opinions, or
refuses you admission if you do not? But I should be joined in the
ministry with men who hold opinions which I do not share! What does that
matter either, unless they compel you also to hold these opinions, as
the price of your being allowed to work on the foundation: _Let every
one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity_? To recur to
our old parallel. It is as if a man who desired the office of a public
magistrate and who was fitted for it, were to hold off because he had to
receive institution from a Lord-Lieutenant, and he did not like the
title of Lord-Lieutenant; or because the Lord-Lieutenant who was to
institute him had a fancy about some occult quality which he conferred
on him at institution; or because he would find himself, when he was
instituted, one of a body of magistrates of whom many had notions which
he thought irrational. The office itself, and his own power to fill it
usefully, is all which really matters to him.
[Footnote 11: It has been inferred from what is here said that we
propose to make re-ordination a condition of admitting Dissenting
ministers to the ministry of the Church of England. Elsewhere I have
said how undesirable it seems to impose this condition; and to what
respectful treatment and fair and equal terms, in case of reunion,
Protestant Nonconformity is, in my opinion, entitled. See the
Preface to _Culture and Anarchy_. What is said in the text is
directed simply against the objection to episcopal ordination as
something wrong in itself and a ground for schism.]
The Bishop of Winchester believes in apostolical succession;--therefore
there must be Dissenters. Mr. Liddon asserts the real
presence;--therefore there must be Dissenters. Mr. Mackonochie is a
ritualist;--therefore there must be Dissenters. But the Bishop of
Winchester cannot, and does not, exclude from the ministry of the Church
of England those who do not believe in apostolical succession; and
surely not even that acute and accomplished personage is such a
magician, that he can make a Puritan believe in apostolical succession
merely by believing in it himself! In the same way, eloquent as is Mr.
Liddon, and devoted as is Mr. Mackonochie, their gifts cannot yield them
the art of so swaying a brother clergyman's spirit as to make him admit
the real presence against his conviction, or practise ritualism against
his will; and official, material control over him, or power of
stipulating what he shall admit or practise, they have absolutely none.
But can anything more tend to make the Church what the Puritans reproach
it with being,--a mere lump of sacerdotalism and ritualism,--than if the
Puritans, who are free to come into it with their disregard of
sacerdotalism and ritualism and so to leaven it, refuse to come in, and
leave it wholly to the sacerdotalists and ritualists? What can be harder
upon the laity of the national Church, what so inconsiderate of the
national good and advantage, as to leave us at the mercy of one single
element in the Church, and deny us just the elements fit to mix with
this element and to improve it?
The current doctrines of apostolical succession and the real presence
seem to us unsound and unedifying. To be sure, so does the current
doctrine of imputed righteousness. For us, sacerdotalism and
solifidianism stand both on the same footing; they are, both of them,
erroneous human developments. But as in the ideas and practice of
sacerdotalists or ritualists there is much which seems to us of value,
and of great use to the Church, so, too, in the ideas and practice of
Nonconformists there is very much which we value. To take points only
that are beyond controversy: they have cultivated the gift of preaching
much more than the clergy, and their union with the Church would
renovate and immensely amend Church preaching. They would certainly
bring with them, if they came back into the Church, some use of what
they call _free prayer_; to which, if at present they give far too much
place, it is yet to be regretted that the Church gives no place at all.
Lastly, if the body of British Protestant Dissenters is in the main, as
it undoubtedly is, the Church of the Philistines, nevertheless there
could come nothing but health and strength from blending this body with
the Establishment, of which the very weakness and danger is that it
tends, as we have formerly said, to be an appendage to the Barbarians.
So long as the Puritans thought that the essence of Christianity was
their doctrine of predestination or of justification, it was natural
that they should stand out, at any cost, for this essence. That is why,
when the 'Zeit-Geist' and the general movement of men's religious ideas
is beginning to reveal that the Puritan gospel is not the essence of
Christianity, we have been desirous to spread this revelation to the
best of our power, and by all the aids of plain popular exposition to
help it forward. Because, when once it is clear that the essence of
Christianity is not Puritan solifidianism, it can hardly long be
maintained that the essence of Christianity is Puritan church-order.
When once the way is made clear, by removing the solifidian heresy, to
look and see what the essence of Christianity really is, it cannot but
soon force itself upon our minds that the essence of Christianity is
something not very far, at any rate, from this: _Grace and peace by the
annulment of our ordinary self through the mildness and sweet
reasonableness of Jesus Christ_. This is the more particular description
of that general ground, already laid down, of the Christian Church's
existence: _Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from
iniquity_. If this general ground, particularised in the way above
given, is not 'the sincere milk' of the evangelical word, it is, at all
events, something very like it. And matters of machinery and outward
form, like church-order, have not only nothing essentially to do with
the sincere milk of Christianity, but are the very matters about which
this sincere milk should make us easy and yielding.
If there were no national and historic form of church-order in
possession, a genuine Christian would regret having to spend time and
thought in shaping one, in having so to encumber himself with serving,
to busy himself so much about a frame for his religious life as well as
about the contents of the frame. After all, a man has only a certain sum
of force to spend; and if he takes a quantity of it for outward things,
he has so much the less left for inward things. It is hardly to be
believed, how much larger a space the mere affairs of his denomination
fill in the time and thoughts of a Dissenter, than in the time and
thoughts of a Churchman. Now all machinery-work of this kind is, to a
man filled with a real love of the essence of Christianity, something of
a hindrance to him in what he most wants to be at, something of a
concession to his ordinary self. When an established and historic form
exists, such a man should be, therefore, disposed to use it and comply
with it. But,--as if it were not satisfied with proving its
unprofitableness by corroding us with jealousy and so robbing us of the
mildness and sweet reasonableness of Christ, which is our
mainstay,--political Dissent, Dissent for the sake of church-polity and
church-management, proves it, too, by stimulating our ordinary self
through over-care for what flatters this. In fact, what is it that the
everyday, middle-class Philistine,--not the rare flower of the
Dissenters but the common staple,--finds so attractive in Dissent? Is it
not, as to discipline, that his self-importance is fomented by the fuss,
bustle, and partisanship of a private sect, instead of being lost in the
greatness of a public body? As to worship, is it not that his taste is
pleased by usages and words that come down to _him_, instead of drawing
him up to _them_; by services which reflect, instead of the culture of
great men of religious genius, the crude culture of himself and his
fellows? And as to doctrine, is it not that his mind is pleased at
hearing no opinion but its own, by having all disputed points taken for
granted in its own favour, by being urged to no return upon itself, no
development? And what is all this but the very feeding and stimulating
of our ordinary self, instead of the annulling of it? No doubt it is
natural; to indulge our ordinary self is the most natural thing in the
world. But Christianity is not natural; and if the flower of
Christianity be the grace and peace which comes of annulling our
ordinary self, then to this flower it is fatal.
So that if, in order to gratify in the Dissenters one of the two faults
against which Christianity is chiefly aimed, a jealous, contentious
spirit, we were to sweep away our national and historic form of
religion, and were all to tinker at our own forms, we should then just
be flattering the other chief fault which Christianity came to cure, and
serving our ordinary self instead of annulling it. What a happy
furtherance to religion!
For my part, so far as the best of the Nonconformist ministers are
concerned, of whom I know something, I disbelieve Mr. Winterbotham's
hideous confession. I imagine they are very little pleased with him for
making it. I do not believe that they, at any rate, live in the
ulcerated condition he describes, fretting with watchful jealousy. I
believe they have other things to think of. But why? Because they are
men of genius and character, who react against the harmful influences of
the position in which they find themselves placed, and surmount its
obvious dangers. But their genius and character might serve them still
better if they were placed in a less trying position. And the rank and
file of their ministers and people do yield to the influences of their
position. Of these, Mr. Winterbotham's picture is perfectly true. They
are more and more jealous for their separate organisation, pleased with
the bustle and self-importance which its magnitude brings them,
irritably alive to whatever reduces or effaces it; bent, in short, on
affirming their ordinary selves. However much the chiefs may feel the
truth of modern ideas, may grow moderate, may perceive the effects of
religious separatism upon worship and doctrine, they will probably avail
little or nothing; the head will be overpowered and out-clamoured by the
tail. The Wesleyans, who used always to refuse to call themselves
Dissenters, whose best men still shrink from the name, the Wesleyans, a
wing of the Church, founded for godliness, the Wesleyans more and more,
with their very growth as a separate denomination, feel the secular
ambition of being great as a denomination, of being effaced by nobody,
of giving contentment to this self-importance, of indulging this
ordinary self; and I should not wonder if within twenty years they were
keen political Dissenters. A triumph of Puritanism is abundantly
possible; we have never denied it. What we, whose greatest care is
neither for the Church nor for Puritanism, but for human perfection,
what we labour to show is, that the triumph of Puritanism will be the
triumph of our ordinary self, not the triumph of Christianity; and that
the type of Hebraism it will establish is one in which neither general
human perfection, nor yet Hebraism itself, can truly find their account.
Elsewhere we have drawn out a distinction between Hebraism and
Hellenism,[12]--between the tendency and powers that carry us towards
doing, and the tendency and powers that carry us towards perceiving and
knowing. Hebraism, we said, has long been overwhelmingly preponderant
with us. The sacred book which we call the Word of God, and which most
of us study far more than any other book, serves Hebraism. Moses
Hebraises, David Hebraises, Isaiah Hebraises, Paul Hebraises, John
Hebraises. Jesus Christ himself is, as St. Paul truly styles him, 'a
minister _of the circumcision_ to the truth of God.'[13] That is, it is
by our powers of moral action, and through the perfecting of these, that
Christ leads us 'to be partakers of the divine nature.'[14] By far our
chief machinery for spiritual purposes has the like aim and character.
Throughout Europe this is so. But, to speak of ourselves only, the
Archbishop of Canterbury is an agent of Hebraism, the Archbishop of York
is an agent of Hebraism, Archbishop Manning is an agent of Hebraism, the
President of the Wesleyan Conference is an agent of Hebraism, all the
body of the Church clergy and Dissenting ministers are agents of
Hebraism. Now, we have seen how we are beginning visibly to suffer harm
from attending in this one-sided way to Hebraism, and how we are called
to develop ourselves more in our totality, on our perceptive and
intelligential side as well as on our moral side. If it is said that
this is a very hard matter, and that man cannot well do more than one
thing at a time, the answer is that here is the very sign and condition
of each new stage of spiritual progress,--_increase of task_. The more
we grow, the greater is the task which is given us. This is the law of
man's nature and of his spirit's history. The powers we have developed
at our old task enable us to attempt a new one; and this, again, brings
with it a new increase of powers.
[Footnote 12: See _Culture and Anarchy_ (2nd edition), chap. iv.]
[Footnote 13: _Romans_, xv, 8.]
[Footnote 14: II _Peter_, i, 4.]
Hebraism strikes too exclusively upon one string in us. Hellenism does
not address itself with serious energy enough to morals and
righteousness. For our totality, for our general perfection, we need to
unite the two; now the two are easily at variance. In their lower forms
they are irreconcileably at variance; only when each of them is at its
best, is their harmony possible. Hebraism at its best is beauty and
charm; Hellenism at its best is also beauty and charm. As such they can
unite; as anything short of this, each of them, they are at discord, and
their separation must continue. The flower of Hellenism is a kind of
amiable grace and artless winning good-nature, born out of the
perfection of lucidity, simplicity, and natural truth; the flower of
Christianity is grace and peace by the annulment of our ordinary self
through the mildness and sweet reasonableness of Christ. Both are
eminently _humane_, and for complete human perfection both are required;
the second being the perfection of that side in us which is moral and
acts, the first, of that side in us which is intelligential and
perceives and knows.
But lower forms of Hebraism and Hellenism tend always to make their
appearance, and to strive to establish themselves. On one of these forms
of Hebraism we have been commenting;--a form which had its first origin,
no doubt, in that body of impulses whereby we Hebraise, but which lands
us at last, not in the mildness and sweet reasonableness of Christ, but
in 'a spirit of watchful jealousy.' We have to thank Mr. Winterbotham
for fixing our attention on it; but we prefer to name it from an eminent
and able man who is well known as the earnest apostle of the Dissidence
of Dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion, and to call
it _Mialism_. Mialism is a sub-form of Hebraism, and itself a somewhat
spurious and degenerated form; but this sub-form always tends to
degenerate into forms lower yet, and yet more unworthy of the ideal
flower of Hebraism. In one of these its further stages we have formerly
traced it, and we need not enlarge on them here.[15]
[Footnote 15: See _Culture and Anarchy_ (2nd edition), chap. ii.]
Hellenism, in the same way, has its more or less spurious and
degenerated sub-forms, products which may be at once known as
degenerations by their deflexion from what we have marked as the flower
of Hellenism,--'a kind of humane grace and artless winning good-nature,
born out of the perfection of lucidity, simplicity, and natural truth.'
And from whom can we more properly derive a general name for these
degenerations, than from that distinguished man, who, by his
intelligence and accomplishments, is in many respects so admirable and
so truly Hellenic, but whom his dislike for 'the dominant sect,' as he
calls the Church of England,--the Church of England, in many aspects so
beautiful, calming, and attaching,--seems to transport with an almost
feminine vehemence of irritation? What can we so fitly name the somewhat
degenerated and inadequate form of Hellenism as _Millism_? This is the
Hellenic or Hellenistic counterpart of Mialism; and like Mialism it has
its further degenerations, in which it is still less commendable than in
its first form. For instance, what in Mr. Mill is but a yielding to a
spirit of irritable injustice, goes on and worsens in some of his
disciples, till it becomes a sort of mere blatancy and truculent
hardness in certain Millites, in whom there appears scarcely anything
that is truly sound or Hellenic at all.
Mankind, however, must needs draw, however slowly, towards its
perfection; and our only real perfection is our totality. Mialism and
Millism we may see playing into one another's hands, and apparently
acting together; but, so long as these lower forms of Hellenism and
Hebraism prevail, the real union between Hellenism and Hebraism can
never be accomplished, and our totality is still as far off as ever.
Unhappy and unquiet alternations of ascendency between Hebraism and
Hellenism are all that we shall see;--at one time, the indestructible
religious experience of mankind asserting itself blindly; at another, a
revulsion of the intellect of mankind from this experience, because of
the audacious assumptions and gross inaccuracies with which men's
account of it is intermingled.
At present it is such a revulsion which seems chiefly imminent. Give the
churches of Nonconformity free scope, cries an ardent Congregationalist,
and we will renew the wonders of the first times; we will confront this
modern bugbear of physical science, show how hollow she is, and how she
contradicts herself! In his mind's eye, this Nonconforming enthusiast
already sees Professor Huxley in a white sheet, brought up at the Surrey
Tabernacle between two deacons,--whom that great physicist, in his own
clear and nervous language, would no doubt describe like his disinterred
Roman the other day at Westminster Abbey, as 'of weak mental
organisation and strong muscular frame,'--and penitently confessing that
_Science contradicts herself_. Alas, the real future is likely to be
very different! Rather are we likely to witness an edifying solemnity,
where Mr. Mill, assisted by his youthful henchmen and apparitors, will
burn all the Prayer Books. Rather will the time come, as it has been
foretold, when we shall desire to see one of the days of the Son of Man,
and shall not see it; when the mildness and sweet reasonableness of
Jesus Christ, as a power to work the annulment of our ordinary self,
will be clean disregarded and out of mind. Then, perhaps, will come
another re-action, and another, and another; and all sterile.