The Establishment is not Your Place
Branch Church Synonymous with National Church
Collision between Church and State Inevitable
Providential Means of Preserving Church Independence
St. Thomas and Henry II.
Experience of 18 Centuries of Christian History
Isolated Church cannot Resist State
Bp. Warburton’s Alliance of Church and State
Catholic Church Alone Proof against Erastianism1
1.
There are persons who may think that the line of thought which I pursued in my last two Lectures had somewhat of a secular and political cast, and was deficient in that simplicity which becomes an inquiry after religious truth. We are inquiring, you may say, whether the National Church is in possession of the Sacraments, whether we can obtain the grace of Christ, necessary for our salvation, at its hands? On this great question depends our leaving its communion or not; but you answer us by simply bidding us consider which course of action will look best, what the world expects of us, how posterity will judge of us, what termination is most logically consistent with our commencement, what are to be the historical fortunes in prospect of a large body of men, variously circumstanced, and subject to a variety of influences from without and within. It is a personal, an individual, question to each inquirer; but you would have us view it as a political game, in which each side makes moves, and just now it is our turn, not, as it really is, a matter of religious conviction, duty, and responsibility.
But thus to speak is mistaking the argument altogether. First, I am not addressing those who have no doubt whatever about the divine origin of the Established Church. I am not attempting to rouse, or, as some would call it, unsettle them. If there be such—for, to tell the truth, I almost doubt their existence—I pass them by. I am contemplating that not inconsiderable number, who are, in a true sense, though in various degrees, and in various modes, inquirers; who, on the one hand, have no doubt at all of the great Apostolical principles which are stamped upon the face of the early Church, and were the life of the movement of 1833; and who, on the other hand, have certain doubts about those principles being the property and the life of the National Church—who have fears, grave anxieties or vague misgivings, as the case may be, lest that communion be not a treasure-house and fount of grace—and then all at once are afraid again, that, after all, perhaps it is, and that it is their own fault that they are blind to the fact, and that it is undutifulness in them to question it;—who, after even their most violent doubts, have seasons of relenting and compunction; and who at length are soperplexed by reason of the clear light pouring in on them from above, yet by the secret whisper the while, that they ought to doubt their own perceptions, because (as they are told) they are impatient, or self-willed, or excited, or dreaming, and have lost the faculty of looking at things in a natural, straightforward way, that at length they do not know what they hold and what they do not hold, or where they stand, and are in conflict within, and almost in a state of anarchy and recklessness.
2.
Now, to persons in this cruel strife of thought, I offer the consideration on which I have been dwelling, as a sort of diversion to their harassed minds; as an argument of fact, external to themselves, and over which they have no power, which is of a nature to arbitrate and decide for them between their own antagonist judgments. You wish to know whether the Establishment is what you began by assuming it to be—the grace-giving Church of God. If it be, you and your principles will surely find your position there and your home. When you proclaim it to be Apostolical, it will smile on you; when you kneel down and ask its blessing, it will stretch its hands over you; when you would strike at heresy, it will arm you for the fight; when you wind your dangerous way with steady tread between Sabellius, Nestorius, and Eutyches, between Pelagius and Calvin, it will follow you with anxious eyes and a beating heart; when you proclaim its relationship to Rome and Greece, it will in transport embrace you as its own dear children; you will sink happily into its arms, you will repose upon its breast, you will recognise your mother, and be at peace. If, however, on the contrary, you find that the more those great principles which you have imbibed from St. Athanasius and St. Augustine, and which have become the life and the form of your moral and intellectual being, vegetate and expand within you, the more awkward and unnatural you find your position in the Establishment, and the more difficult its explanation; if there is no lying, or standing, or sitting, or kneeling, or stooping there, in any possible attitude; if, as in the tyrant’s cage, when you would rest your head, your legs are forced out between the Articles, and when you would relieve your back, your head strikes against the Prayer Book; when, place yourselves as you will, on the right side or the left, and try to keep as still as you can, your flesh is ever being punctured and probed by the stings of Bishops, laity, and nine-tenths of the Clergy buzzing about you; is it not as plain as day that the Establishment is not your place, since it is no place for your principles? Those principles are not there professed, they are not there realised. That mystical sacramental system on which your thoughts live, which was once among men, as you know well—and therefore must be always with them—is not the inheritance of Anglicanism, but must have been bequeathed to others; it must be sought elsewhere. You have doubts on the point already; well, here is the confirmation of them. I have no wish, then, to substitute an external and political view for your personal serious inquiry. I am but assisting you in that inquiry; I am deciding existing doubts, which belong to yourselves, by an external fact, which is as admissible, surely, in such a matter, as the allegation of miracles would be, or any other evidence of the kind; for the same God who works in you individually, is working in the public and historical course of things also.