Chapter XXXII: Lord Blachford (2)

In looking over the cases which have been brought together into a connected series, the first point which is suggested by the review is the great and important change in the aspect and bearing of doctrinal controversies, and in the situation of the Church, as affected by them, which the creation and action of this Court have made. From making it almost a matter of principle and boast to dispense with any living judge of controversies, the Church has passed to having a very energetic one. Up to the Gorham judgment, it can hardly be said that the ruling of courts of law had had the slightest influence on the doctrinal position and character of the Church. Keen and fierce as had been the controversies in the Church up to that judgment, how often had a legal testing of her standards been seriously sought for or seriously appealed to? There had been accusations of heresy, trials, condemnations, especially in the times following the Reformation and preceding the Civil War; there had been appeals and final judgments given in such final courts as existed; but all without making any mark on the public mind or the received meaning of doctrines and formularies, and without leaving a trace except in law reports. They seem to have been forgotten as soon as the particular case was disposed of. The limits of supposed orthodox belief revived; but it was not the action of judicial decisions which either narrowed or enlarged them. Bishop Marsh's Calvinists never thought of having recourse to law. If the Church did not do entirely without a Court of Final Appeal, it is simply a matter of fact that the same weight and authority were not attached to the proceedings of such a court which are attached to them now. But since the Gorham case, the work of settling authoritatively, if not the meaning of doctrines and of formularies, at any rate the methods of interpreting and applying them, has been briskly going on in the courts, and a law laid down by judges without appeal has been insensibly fastening its hold upon us. The action of the courts is extolled as being all in the direction of liberty. Whatever this praise may be worth, it is to be observed that it is, after all, a wooden sort of liberty, and shuts up quite as much as it opens. It may save, in this case or that, individual liberty; but it does so by narrowing artificially the natural and common-sense grounds of argument in religious controversy, and abridging as much as possible the province of theology. Before the Gorham case, the Formularies in general were the standard and test, free to both sides, about baptismal regeneration. Both parties had the ground open to them, to make what they could of them by argument and reason. Discipline was limited by the Articles and Formularies, and in part by the authority of great divines and by the prevailing opinion of the Church, and by nothing else; these were the means which each side had to convince and persuade and silence the other, and each side might hope that in the course of time its sounder and better supported view might prevail. But now upon this state of things comes from without a dry, legal, narrow stereotyping, officially and by authority, of the sense to be put upon part of the documents in the controversy. You appeal to the Prayer-book; your opponent tells you, Oh, the Court of Appeal has ruled against you there: and that part of your case is withdrawn from you, and he need give himself no trouble to argue the matter with you. Against certain theological positions, perhaps of great weight, and theological evidence, comes, not only the doctrine of theological opponents, but the objection that they are bad law. The interpretation which, it may be, we have assumed all our lives, and which we know to be that of Fathers and divines, is suddenly pronounced not to be legal. The decision does not close the controversy, which goes on as keenly and with perhaps a little more exasperation than before; it simply stops off, by virtue of a legal construction, a portion of the field of argument for one party, which was, perhaps, supposed to have the strongest claim to it. The Gorham case bred others; and now, at last, after fifteen years, we have got, as may be seen in Messrs. Brodrick and Fremantle's book, a body of judicial _dicta_, interpretations, rules of exposition, and theological propositions, which have grown up in the course of these cases, and which in various ways force a meaning and construction on the theological standards and language of the Church, which in some instances they were never thought to have, and which they certainly never had authoritatively before. Besides her Articles and Prayer-hook, speaking the language of divines and open to each party to interpret according to the strength and soundness of their theological ground, we are getting a supplementary set of legal limitations and glosses, claiming to regulate theological argument if not teaching, and imposed upon us by the authority not of the Church or even of Parliament but of the Judges of the Privy Council. This, it strikes us, is a new position of things in the Church, a new understanding and a changed set of conditions on which to carry on controversies of doctrine; and it seems to us to have a serious influence not only on the responsibility of the Church for her own doctrine, but on the freedom and genuineness with which questions as to that doctrine are discussed. The Court is not to blame for this result; to do it justice, it has generally sought to decide as little as it could; and the interference of law with the province of pure theology is to be rather attributed to that mania for deciding, which of late has taken possession pretty equally of all parties. But the indisputable result is seen to be, after the experience of fifteen years, that law is taking a place in our theological disputes and our theological system which is new to it in our theological history; law, not laid down prospectively in general provisions, but emerging indirectly and incidentally out of constructions and judicial rulings on cases of pressing and hazardous exigency; law, applying its technical and deliberately narrow processes to questions which of course it cannot solve, but can only throw into formal and inadequate, if not unreal, terms; and laying down the limits of belief and assertion on matters about which hearts burn and souls tremble, by the mouth of judges whose consummate calmness and ability is only equalled by their profound and avowed want of sympathy for the theology of which their position makes them the expounders and final arbiters. A system has begun with respect to English Church doctrine, analogous to that by which Lord Stowell made the recent law of the sea, or that by which on a larger scale the rescripts and decrees of the Popes moulded the great system of the canon law.

This is the first thing that strikes us on a comparative survey of this set of decisions. The second point is one which at first sight seems greatly to diminish the importance of this new condition of things, but which on further consideration is seen to have a more serious bearing than might have been thought. This is, the odd haphazard way in which points have come up for decision; the sort of apparent chance which has finally governed the issue of the various contentions; and the infinitesimally fine character of the few propositions of doctrine to which the Court has given the sanction of its ruling. Knowing what we all of us cannot help knowing, and seeing things which lawyers and judges are bound not to allow themselves to see or take account of, we find it difficult to repress the feeling of amazement, as we travel through the volume, to see Mr. Gorham let off, Mr. Heath deprived, then Dr. Williams and Mr. Wilson let off, and to notice the delicate technical point which brought to nought the laborious and at one time hopeful efforts of the worthy persons who tried to turn out Archdeacon Denison. And as to the matter of the decisions, though undoubtedly _dicta_ of great importance are laid down in the course of them, yet it is curious to observe the extremely minute and insignificant statements on which in the more important cases judgment is actually pronounced. The Gorham case was held to affect the position of a great party; but the language and theory actually examined and allowed would hardly, in legal strictness, authorise much more than the very peculiar views of Mr. Gorham himself. And in the last case, the outside lay world has hardly yet done wondering at the consummate feat of legal subtlety by which the issue whether the English Church teaches that the Bible is inspired was transmuted into the question whether it teaches that every single part of every single book is inspired. It might seem that rulings, of which the actual product in the way of doctrinal propositions was so small, were hardly subjects for any keen interest. But it would be shortsighted to regard the matter in this way. In the first place, whatever may have happened as yet, it is manifestly a serious thing for Church of England doctrine to have been thrown, on a scale which is quite new, into the domain of a court of law, to lie at the mercy of the confessed chances and uncertainties of legal interpretation, with nothing really effective to correct and remedy what may possibly be, without any fault in the judges, a fatally mischievous construction of the text and letter of her authoritative documents. In the next place, no one can fail to see, no one in fact affects to deny, that the general result of these recent decisions, capricious as their conclusions look at first sight, has been to make the Formularies mean much less than they were supposed to mean. The tendency of every English court, appealed to not as a court of equity but one of criminal jurisdiction, is naturally to be exacting and even narrow in the interpretation of language. The general impression left by these cases is that the lines of doctrine in the English Church are regarded by the judicial mind as very faint, and not much to be depended upon; and that these judgments may be the first steps in that insensible process by which the unpretending but subtle and powerful engine of interpretation has been applied by the courts to give a certain turn to law and policy; applied, in this instance, to undermine the definiteness and certainty of doctrine, and in the end, the understanding itself which has hitherto existed between the Church and the State, and has kept alive the idea of her distinct basis, functions, and rights.

This is the view of matters which arises from an examination of the proceedings contained in this volume. What is the argument urged in the Historical Introduction to justify or recommend our acquiescence in it? It seems to us to consist mainly in a one-sided and exaggerated statement of the Supremacy claimed and brought in by Henry VIII., and of the effect in theory and fact which it ought to have on our notion of the Church and of Church right. The complaint of the present state of things is, that those who may be taken to represent the interests of the Church in such a matter as the character of her teaching are practically excluded from having any real influence in the decision of questions by which the character of that teaching is affected. The answer is that she has no right to claim a separate interest in the matter, and that the doctrine of the Royal Supremacy was meant to extinguish, and has extinguished, any pretence to such a claim. The _animus_ which pervades the work, and which is not obscurely disclosed in such things as footnotes and abridgments of legal arguments, is thus given--more freely, of course, than it would be proper to introduce in a book like this--in some remarks of Mr. Brodrick, one of the editors, at a recent discussion of the question of Ecclesiastical Appeals in a committee of the Social Science Association. He is reported to have spoken as follows:--

The Church of England being established by law, could not be
allowed any independence of action; and those who wished for it
were like people who wanted to have their cake and eat it. As to
the Privy Council, he had never heard its decisions charged with
error. What was complained of was that it had declined to take the
current opinions of theologians and make them part of the
Thirty-nine Articles. There was no need whatever for the Privy
Council to possess any special theological knowledge. The only
case where that knowledge was necessary was when it was alleged
that doctrines had been held in the Church without censure. That
was a case in which considerable theological lore was required;
but it was within the province of counsel to supply it. Divines
had now discovered, what lawyers could have told them long ago,
and what he knew some of them had been told--namely, that it would
not do to treat the Thirty-nine Articles as penal statutes;
because, if that were done, a coach might be easily driven through
them. If they had wished to maintain the authority of the
Articles, they would have done best to have kept quiet.

The present Court of Appeal is deduced, in the Historical Introduction, as a natural and logical consequence, from Henry VIII.'s Supremacy. Undoubtedly it is scarcely possible to overstate the all-grasping despotism of Henry VIII., and if a precedent for anything reckless of all separate rights and independence should be wanted, it would never be sought in vain if looked for in the policy and legislation of that reign. So far the editors are right; the power over religion claimed by Henry VIII. will carry them wherever they want to go; it will give them, if they need it, as a still more logical and legitimate development of the Supremacy, the Court of High Commission. Only they ought to have remembered, as fair historians, that even in the days of the Supremacy the distinct nature and business of the Church and of Churchmen was never denied. Laymen were given powers over the Church and in the Church which were new; but the distinct province of the Church, if abridged and put under new control, was not abolished. Side by side with the facts showing the Supremacy and its exercise are a set of facts, for those who choose to see them, showing that the Church was still recognised, even by Henry VIII., as a body which he had not created, which he was obliged to take account of, and which filled a place utterly different from every other body in the State. Henry VIII. played the tyrant with his Churchmen as he did with his Parliament and with everybody else; and Churchmen, like everybody else, submitted to him. But the "Imperialism" of Henry VIII., though it went beyond even the Imperialism of Justinian and Charlemagne in its encroachments on the spiritual power, as little denied the fact of that power as they did. He recognised the distinct place and claims of the spiritualty; and, as we suppose that even the editors of this volume hardly feel themselves bound to make out the consistency of Henry, they might have spared themselves the weak and not very fair attempt to get rid of the force of the remarkable words in which this recognition is recorded in the first Statute of Appeals (24 Henry VIII. c. 12). The words would, no doubt, be worth but little, were it not that as a matter of fact a spiritualty did act and judge and lay down doctrine, and even while yielding to unworthy influence did keep up their corporate existence.

But when the ecclesiastical legislation of Henry VIII. is referred to, not merely as the historical beginning of a certain state of things which has undergone great changes in the course of events, but as affording a sort of idea and normal pattern to which our own arrangements ought to conform, as supplying us with a theory of Church and State which holds good at least against the Church, it seems hard that the Church alone should not have the benefit of the entire alteration of circumstances since that theory was a reality. Those who talk about the Supremacy ought to remember what the Supremacy pretended to be. It was over _all_ causes and _all_ persons, civil as well as ecclesiastical. It held good certainly in theory, and to a great extent in practice, against the temporalty as much as against the spiritualty. Why then are we to invoke the Supremacy as then understood, in a question about courts of spiritual appeals, and not in questions about other courts and other powers in the nation? If the Supremacy, claimed and exercised as Henry claimed and exercised it, is good against the Church, it is good against many other things besides. If the Church inherits bonds and obligations, not merely by virtue of distinct statutes, but by the force of a general vague arbitrary theory of royal power, why has that power been expelled, or transformed into a mere fiction of law, in all other active branches of the national life? Unless the Church is simply, what even Henry VIII. did not regard it, a creation and delegate of the national power, without any roots and constitution of its own, why should the Church be denied the benefit of the common sense, and the change in ideas and usage, which have been so largely appealed to in civil matters? Why are we condemned to a theory which is not only out of date and out of harmony with all the traditions and convictions of modern times, hut which was in its own time tyrannous, revolutionary, and intolerable? Arguments in favour of the present Court, drawn from the reason of the thing, and the comparative fitness of the judges for their office, if we do not agree with them, at least we can understand. But precedents and arguments from the Supremacy of Henry VIII. suggest the question whether those who use them are ready to be taken at their word and to have back that Supremacy as it was; and whether the examples of policy of that reign are seemly to quote as adequate measures of the liberty and rights of any set of Englishmen.

The question really calling for solution is--How to reconcile the just freedom of individual teachers in the Church with the maintenance of the right and duty of the Church to uphold the substantial meaning of her body of doctrine? In answering this question we can get no help from this volume. It simply argues that the present is practically the best of all possible courts; that it is a great improvement, which probably it is, on the Courts of Delegates; and that great confidence ought to be felt in its decisions. We are further shown how jealously and carefully the judges have guarded the right of the individual teacher. But it seems to us, according to the views put forward in this book, that as the price of all this--of great learning, weight, and ability in the judges--of great care taken of liberty--the Church is condemned to an interpretation of the Royal Supremacy which floats between the old arbitrary view of it and the modern Liberal one, and which uses each, as it happens to be most convenient, against the claim of the Church to protect her doctrine and exert a real influence on the authoritative declaration of it. We all need liberty, and we all ought to be ready to give the reasonable liberty which we profess to claim for ourselves. But it is a heavy price to pay for it, if the right and the power is to be taken out of the hands of the Church to declare what is the real meaning of what she supposes herself bound to teach.

IV

SIR JOHN COLERIDGE ON THE PURCHAS CASE[5]

[5]
_Remarks on Some Parts of the Report of the Judicial Committee in
the Case of "Elphinstone against Purchas."_ A Letter to Canon Liddon,
from the Right Hon. Sir J.T. Coleridge. _Guardian_, 5th April 1871.

No one has more right to speak with authority, or more deserves to be listened to at a difficult and critical moment for the Church, than Sir J.T. Coleridge. An eminent lawyer, and a most earnest and well-informed Churchman, he combines in an unusual way claims on the attention of all who care for the interests of religion, and for those, too, which are so deeply connected with them, the interests of England. The troubles created by the recent judgment have induced him to come forward from his retirement with words of counsel and warning.

The gist of his Letter may be shortly stated. He is inclined to think the decision arrived at by the Judicial Committee a mistaken one. But he thinks that it would be a greater and a worse mistake to make this decision, wrong as it may be, a reason for looking favourably on disestablishment as a remedy for what is complained of. We are glad to note the judgment of so fair an observer and so distinguished a lawyer, himself a member of the Privy Council, both on the intrinsic suitableness and appropriateness of the position[6] which has been ruled to be illegal, and on the unsatisfactoriness of the interpretation itself, as a matter of judicial reading and construction. A great deal has been said, and it is plain that the topic is inexhaustible, on the unimportance of a position. We agree entirely--on condition that people remember the conditions and consequences of their assertion. Every single outward accompaniment of worship may, if you carry your assertion to its due level, be said to be in itself utterly unimportant; place and time and form and attitude are all things not belonging to the essence of the act itself, and are indefinitely changeable, as, in fact, the changes in them have been countless. Kneeling is not of the essence of prayer, but imagine, first prohibiting the posture of kneeling, and then remonstrating with those who complained of the prohibition, on the ground of postures being unimportant. It is obvious that when you have admitted to the full that a position is in itself unimportant, all kinds of reasons may come in on the further question whether it is right, fitting, natural. There are reasons why the position which has been so largely adopted of late is the natural and suitable one. Sir John Coleridge states them admirably:--

[6]
The Eastward Position at the celebration of the Holy Communion.

As to the place of standing at the consecration, my _feeling_ is
with them. It seems to me not desirable to make it essential or
even important that the people should see the breaking of the
bread, or the taking the cup into the hands of the priest, and
positively mischievous to encourage them in gazing on him, or
watching him with critical eyes while so employed. I much prefer
the _spirit of_ the Rubric of 1549--First Book of Edward
VI.--which says, "These words before rehearsed are to be said
turning still to the Altar, without any elevation, or showing the
Sacraments to the people." The use now enforced, I think, tends to
deprive the most solemn rite of our religion of one of its most
solemn particulars. Surely, whatever school we belong to, and even
if we consider the whole rite merely commemorative, it is a very
solemn idea to conceive the priest at the head of his flock, and,
as it were, a shepherd leading them on in heart and spirit,
imploring for them and with them the greatest blessing which man
is capable of receiving on earth; he alone uttering the
prayer--they meanwhile kneeling all, and in deep silence
listening, not gazing, rather with closed eyes--and with their
whole undistracted attention, joining in the prayer with one heart
and without sound until the united "Amen" breaks from them at the
close, and seals their union and assent.

But, of course, comes the further question, whether, an English clergyman is authorised to use it. He is not authorised if the Prayer Book tells him not to. Of that there is no question. But if the Prayer Book not only seems to give him the liberty, but, by the _prima facie_ look of its words, seems to prescribe it, the harshness of a ruling which summarily and under penalties prohibits it is not to be smoothed down by saying that the matter is unimportant. Sir John Coleridge's view of the two points will be read with interest:--

You will understand, of course, that I write in respect of the
Report recently made by the Judicial Committee in the Purchas
case. I am not about to defend it. No one, however, ought to
pronounce a condemnation of the solemn judgment of such a tribunal
without much consideration; and this remark applies with, special
force to myself, well knowing as I do those from whom it
proceeded, and having withdrawn from sharing in the labours of the
Committee only because age had impaired, with the strength of my
body, the faculties also of my mind; and so disabled me from the
proper discharge of any judicial duties. With this admission on my
part, I yet venture to say that I think Mr. Purchas has not had
justice done to him in two main points of the late appeal; I mean
the use of the vestments complained of and the side of the
communion-table which he faced when consecrating the elements for
the Holy Communion. Before I state my reasons, let me premise that
I am no Ritualist, in the now conventional use of the term. I do
not presume to judge of the motives of those to whom that name is
applied. From the information of common but undisputed report as
to some of the most conspicuous, I believe them entitled to all
praise for their pastoral devotedness and their laborious,
self-denying lives; still, I do not shrink from saying that I
think them misguided, and the cause of mischief in the Church. So
much for my _feeling_ in regard to the vestments. I prefer the
surplice at all times and in all ministrations.

This is _feeling_--and I see no word in the sober language of our
rubric which interferes with it--but my _feeling_ is of no
importance in the argument, and I mention it only in candour, to
show in what spirit I approach the argument.

Now Mr. Purchas has been tried before the Committee for offences
alleged to have been committed against the provisions of the "Act
of Uniformity"; of this Act the Common Prayer Book is part and
parcel. As to the vestments, his conduct was alleged to be in
derogation of the rubric as to the ornaments of the Church and the
ministers thereof, which ordains that such shall be retained and
be in use as were in the Church of England by the authority of
Parliament in the second year of the reign of King Edward VI. The
Act of Uniformity is to be construed by the same rules exactly as
any Act passed in the last session of Parliament. The clause in
question (by which I mean the rubric in question) is perfectly
unambiguous in language, free from all difficulty as to
construction; it therefore lets in no argument as to intention
otrier than that which the words themselves import. There might be
a seeming difficulty in _fact_, because it might not be known what
vestments were in use by authority of Parliament in the second
year of the reign of King Edward VI.; but this difficulty has been
removed. It is conceded in the Report that the vestments, the use
of which is now condemned, were in use by authority of Parliament
in that year. Having that fact, you are bound to construe the
rubric as if those vestments were specifically named in it,
instead of being only referred to. If an Act should be passed
to-morrow that the uniform of the Guards should henceforth be such
as was ordered for them by authority and used by them in the 1st
George I., you would first ascertain what that uniform was; and,
having ascertained it, you would not inquire into the changes
which may have been made, many or few, with or without lawful
authority, between the 1st George I. and the passing of the new
Act. All these, that Act, specifying the earlier date, would have
made wholly immaterial. It would have seemed strange, I suppose,
if a commanding officer, disobeying the statute, had said in his
defence, "There have been many changes since the reign of George
I.; and as to 'retaining,' we put a gloss on that, and thought it
might mean only retaining to the Queen's use; so we have put the
uniforms safely in store." But I think it would have seemed more
strange to punish and mulct him severely if he had obeyed the law
and put no gloss on plain words.

This case stands on the same principle. The rubric indeed seems to
me to imply with some clearness that in the long interval between
Edward VI. and the 14th Charles II. there had been many changes;
but it does not stay to specify them, or distinguish between what
was mere evasion and what was lawful; it quietly passes them all
by, and goes back to the legalised usage of the second year of
Edward VI. What had prevailed since, whether by an Archbishop's
gloss, by Commissions, or even Statutes, whether, in short, legal
or illegal, it makes quite immaterial.

I forbear to go through the long inquiry which these last words
remind one of--not, I am sure, out of any disrespectful feeling to
the learned and reverend authors of the Report, but because it
seems to me wholly irrelevant to the point for decision. This
alone I must add, that even were the inquiry relevant, the
authorities on which they rely do not appear to me so clear or
cogent, nor the analogies relied on so just, as to warrant the
conclusion arrived at. For it should never be forgotten that the
defendant in a criminal case, acquitted as to this charge by the
learned judge below, was entitled to every presumption in his
favour, and could not properly be condemned but by a judgment free
from all reasonable doubt. And this remark acquires additional
strength because the judgment will be final not only on him but on
the whole Church for all time, unless reversed by the Legislature.

On the second point he thus speaks, in terms which for their guarded moderation are all the more worth notice:--

Upon the second point I have less to say, though it is to me much
the most important. The Report, I think, cannot be shown
conclusively to be wrong here, as it may be on the other; still it
does not seem to me to be shown conclusively to be right. You have
yourself given no reason in your second letter of the 8th March
for doubting at least.

Let me add that, in my opinion, on such a question as this, where
a conclusion is to be arrived at upon the true meaning of Rubrics
framed more than two centuries since, and certainly not with a
view to any such minute criticism as on these occasions is and
must be applied to them, and where the evidence of facts is by no
means clear, none probably can be arrived at free from reasonable
objection. What is the consequence? It will be asked, Is the
question to receive no judicial solution? I am not afraid to
answer, Better far that it should receive none than that injustice
should be done. The principles of English law furnish the
practical solution: dismiss the party charged, unless his
conviction can be based on grounds on which reasonable and
competent minds can rest satisfied and without scruple. And what
mighty mischief will result to countervail the application of this
rule of justice? For two centuries our Church has subsisted
without an answer to the question which alone gives importance to
this inquiry, and surely has not been without God's blessing for
that time, in spite of all much more serious shortcomings. Let us
remember that Charity, or to use perhaps a better word, Love, is
the greatest of all; if that prevail there need be little fear for
our Faith or our Hope.

Having said this much, Sir John Coleridge proceeds to the second, and indeed the main object of his letter--to remonstrate against exaggeration in complaint, both of the particular decision and of the Court which gave it:--

I now return to your letter. You proceed to attempt to show that
the words of Keble to yourself, which you cite, are justified by
remarks in this Report and some previous judgments of the same
tribunal, which appear to you so inconsistent with each other as
to make it difficult to believe that the Court was impartial, or
"incapable of regarding the documents before it in the light of a
plastic material, which might be made to support conclusions held
to be advisable at the moment, and on independent grounds." I wish
these words had never been written. They will, I fear, be
understood as conveying your formed opinions; and coming from you,
and addressed to minds already excited and embittered, they will
be readily accepted, though they import the heaviest charges
against judges--some of them bishops--all of high and hitherto
unimpeached character. A very long experience of judicial life
makes me know that judges will often provoke and bitterly
disappoint both the suitors before them and the public, when
discharging their duty honestly and carefully, and a man is
scarcely fit for the station unless he can sit tolerably easy
under censures which even these may pass upon him. Yet,
imputations of partiality or corruption are somewhat hard to bear
when they are made by persons of your station and character. When
the Judicial Committee sits on appeals from the Spiritual Courts,
it _may_ certainly be under God's displeasure, the members _may_
be visited with judicial blindness, and deprived of the integrity
which in other times and cases they manifest. Against such a
supposition there is no direct argument, and I will not enter into
such a disputation. I have so much confidence in your generosity
and candour, on reflection, as to believe you would not desire I
should.

In the individual case I simply protest against the insinuation. I
add a word or two by way of general observation.

No doubt you have read the judgments in all the cases you allude
to carefully; but have you read the pleadings and arguments of the
counsel, so as to know accurately the points raised for the
consideration of those who were to decide? To know the offence
charged and the judgment pronounced may suffice in some cases for
an opinion by a competent person, whether the one warranted the
other; but more is required to warrant the imputation of
inconsistency, partiality, or indirect motives. He who takes this
on himself should know further how the pleadings and the arguments
presented the case for judgment, and made this or that particular
relevant in the discussion. Every one at all familiar with this
matter knows that a judgment not uncommonly fails to reflect the
private opinion of the judge on the whole of a great point,
because the issues of law or fact actually brought before him, and
which alone he was bound to decide, did not bring this before him.
And this rule, always binding, is, of course, never more so than
in regard to a Court of Final Appeal, which should be careful not
to conclude more than is regularly before it. Let me add that a
just and considerate person will wholly disregard the gossip which
flies about in regard to cases exciting much interest; passing
words in the course of an argument, forgotten when the judgment
comes to be considered, are too often caught up, as having guided
the final determination.

Such words are a just rebuke to much of the inconsiderate talk which follows on any public act which touches the feelings, perhaps the highest and purest feelings of men with deep convictions. Perhaps Mr. Liddon's words were unguarded ones. But at the same time it is necessary to state without disguise what is the truth in this matter. It is necessary for the sake of justice and historical truth. The Court of Final Appeal is not like other courts. It is not a pure and simple court of law, though it is composed of great lawyers. It is doubtless a court where their high training and high professional honour come in, as they do elsewhere. But great lawyers are men, partisans and politicians, statesmen, if you like; and this is a court where they are not precluded, in the same degree as they are in the regular courts by the habits and prescriptions of the place, from thinking of what comes before them in its relation to public affairs. It is no mere invention of disappointed partisans, it is no idle charge of wilful unfairness, to say that considerations of high policy come into their deliberations; it has been the usual language, ever since the Gorham case, of men who cared little for the subject-matter of the questions debated; it is the language of those who urge the advantages of the Court. "It is a court," as the Bishop of Manchester said the other day, speaking in its praise, "composed of men who look at things not merely with the eyes of lawyers, but also with the eyes of statesmen." Precisely so; and for that reason they must be considered to have the responsibilities, not only of lawyers, but of statesmen, and their acts are proportionably open to discussion. Sir John Coleridge urges the impossibility of any other court; and certainly till we could be induced to trust an ecclesiastical court, composed of bishops or clergymen, in a higher degree than we could do at present, we see no alternative. But to say that a clerical court would be no improvement is not to prove that the present court is a satisfactory one. It may be difficult under our present circumstances to reform it. But though we may have reasons for making the best of it, we may be allowed to say that it is a singularly ill-imagined and ill-constructed court, and one in which the great features of English law and justice are not so conspicuous as they are elsewhere. Suitors do not complain in other courts either of the ruling, or sometimes of the language of judges, as they complain in this. But when this is made a ground for joining with the enemies of all that the English Church holds dear, to bring about a great break-up of the existing state of things, we agree with Sir John Coleridge in thinking that a great mistake is made; and if care is not taken, it may be an irreparable one. He writes:--

I hasten to my conclusion too long delayed, but a word must still
be added on a subject of not less consequence than any I have yet
touched on. You say, "Churchmen will to a very great extent indeed
find relief from the dilemma in a third course, viz. _co-operation
with the political forces_, which, year by year, more and more
steadily are working towards disestablishment. This is not a
menace; it is the statement of a simple fact." I am bound to
believe, and I do believe, you do not intend this as a menace; but
such a statement of a future course to depend on a contingency
cannot but read very much like one--and against your intention it
may well be understood as such. You do not say that _you_ are one
who will co-operate with the political party which now seeks to
disestablish the Church in accomplishing its purpose, and I do not
suppose you ever will. But on behalf, not so much of the clergy as
of the laity--on behalf of the worshippers in our churches, of the
sick to be visited at home--of the poor in their cottages, of our
children in their schools--of our society in general, I entreat
those of the clergy who are now feeling the most acutely in this
matter, not to suffer their minds to be so absorbed by the present
grievance as to take no thought of the evils of disestablishment.
I am not foolishly blind to the faults of the clergy--indeed I
fear I am sometimes censorious in regard to them--and some of
their faults I do think may be referable to Establishment; the
possession of house and land, and a sort of independence of their
parishioners, in some cases seems to tend to secularity. I regret
sometimes their partisanship at elections, their speeches at
public dinners. But what good gift of God is not liable to abuse
from men? Taken as a whole, we have owed, and we do owe, under
Him, to our Established clergy more than we can ever repay, much
of it rendered possible by their Establishment. I may refer, and
now with special force, to Education--their services in this
respect no one denies--and but for Establishment these, I think,
could not have been so effectively and systematically rendered. We
are now in a great crisis as to this all-important matter.
Concurring, as I do heartily, in the praise which has been
bestowed on Mr. Forster, and expecting that his great and arduous
office will be discharged with perfect impartiality by him, and
with a just sense of how much is due to the clergy in this
respect, still it cannot be denied that the powers conferred by
the Legislature on the holder of it are alarmingly great, even if
necessary; and who shall say in what a spirit they may be
exercised by his successor? For the general upholding of religious
education, in emergencies not improbable, to whom can we look in
general so confidently as to the parochial clergy? I speak now
specially in regard to parishes such as I am most familiar with,
in agricultural districts, small, not largely endowed, sometimes
without resident gentry, and with the land occupied by
rack-renting farmers, indifferent or hostile to education.

In what Sir John Coleridge urges against the fatal step of welcoming disestablishment under an impatient sense of injustice we need not say that we concur most earnestly. But it cannot be too seriously considered by those who see the mischief of disestablishment, that as Sir John Coleridge also says, the English Churrh is, in one sense, a divided one; and that to pursue a policy of humiliating and crippling one of its great parties must at last bring mischief. The position of the High Church party is a remarkable one. It has had more against it than its rivals; yet it is probably the strongest of them all. It is said, probably with reason, to be the unpopular party. It has been the stock object of abuse and sarcasm with a large portion of the press. It has been equally obnoxious to Radical small shopkeepers and "true blue" farmers and their squires. It has been mobbed in churches and censured in Parliament. Things have gone against it, almost uniformly, before the tribunals. And unfortunately it cannot be said that it has been without its full share of folly and extravagance in some of its members. And yet it is the party which has grown; which has drawn some of its antagonists to itself, and has reacted on the ideas and habits of others; its members have gradually, as a matter of course, risen into important post and power. And it is to be noticed that, as a party, it has been the most tolerant. All parties are in their nature intolerant; none more so, where critical points arise, than Liberal ones. But in spite of the Dean of Westminster's surprise at High Churchmen claiming to be tolerant, we still think that, in the first place, they are really much less inclined to meddle with their neighbours than others of equally strong and deep convictions; and further, that they have become so more and more; and they have accepted the lessons of their experience; they have thrown off, more than any strong religious body, the intolerance which was natural to everybody once, and have learned, better than they did at one time, to bear with what they dislike and condemn. If a party like this comes to feel itself dealt with harshly and unfairly, sacrificed to popular clamour or the animosity of inveterate and unscrupulous opponents, it is certain that we shall be in great danger.

V

MR. GLADSTONE'S LETTER ON THE ENGLISH CHURCH[7]

[7]
_Guardian_, 29th October 1884.

Mr. Gladstone's Letter, read at the St. Asaph Diocesan Conference, will not have surprised those who have borne in mind his deep and unintermitted interest in the fortunes and prospects of the Church, and his habit of seeking relief from the pressure of one set of thoughts and anxieties by giving full play to his mental energies in another direction. Its composition and appearance at this moment are quite accounted for; it is a contribution to the business of the conference of his own diocese, and it was promised long before an autumn session on a great question between the two Houses was in view. Still the appearance of such a document from a person in Mr. Gladstone's position must, of course, invite attention and speculation. He may put aside the questions which the word "Disestablishment"--which was in the thesis given him to write upon--is likely to provoke--"Will it come? ought it to come? must it come? Is it near, or somewhat distant, or indefinitely remote?" On these questions he has not a word to say. But, all the same, people will naturally try to read between the lines, and to find out what was in the writer's thoughts about these questions. We cannot, however, see that there is anything to be gathered from the Letter as to the political aspect of the matter; he simply confines himself to the obvious lesson which passing events sufficiently bring with them, that whatever may come it is our business to be prepared.

His anxieties are characteristic. The paper shows, we think, that it has not escaped him that disestablishment, however compensated as some sanguine people hope, would be a great disaster and ruin. It would be the failure and waste to the country of noble and astonishing efforts; it would be the break-up and collapse of a great and cheap system, by which light and human kindliness and intelligence are carried to vast tracts, that without its presence must soon become as stagnant and hopeless as many of the rural _communes_ of France; the blow would at the moment cripple and disorganise the Church for its work even in the towns. But though "happily improbable," it may come; and in such a contingency, what occupies Mr. Gladstone's thoughts is, not the question whether it would be disastrous, but whether it would be disgraceful. That is the point which disturbs and distresses him--the possibility that the end of our later Church history, the end of that wonderful experiment which has been going on from the sixteenth century, with such great vicissitudes, but after every shock with increasing improvement and hope, should at last be not only failure, but failure with dishonour; and this, he says, could only come in one of two ways. It might come from the Church having sunk into sloth and death, without faith, without conscience, without love. This, if it ever was really to be feared, is not the danger before us now. Activity, conviction, energy, self-devotion, these, and not apathetic lethargy, mark the temper of our times; and they are as conspicuous in the Church as anywhere else. But these qualities, as we have had ample experience, may develop into fierce and angry conflicts. It is our internal quarrels, Mr. Gladstone thinks, that create the most serious risk of disestablishment; and it is only our quarrels, which we have not good sense and charity enough to moderate and keep within bounds, which would make it "disgraceful."

The main feature of the Letter is the historical retrospect which Mr. Gladstone gives of the long history, the long travail of the later English Church. Hardly in its first start, under the Tudors, but more and more as time went on, it instinctively, as it were, tried the great and difficult problem of Christian liberty. The Churches of the Continent, Roman and anti-Roman, were simple in their systems; only one sharply defined theology, only the disciples and representatives of one set of religious tendencies, would they allow to dwell within their borders; what was refractory and refused to harmonise was at once cast out; and for a certain time they were unvexed with internal dissensions. This, both in the case of the Roman, the Lutheran, and the Calvinistic Churches of the Continent, requires to be somewhat qualified; still, as compared with the rival schools of the English Church, Puritan and Anglican, the contrast is a true and a sharp one. Mr. Gladstone adopts from a German writer a view which is certainly not new to many in England, that "the Reformation, as a religious movement, took its shape in England, not in the sixteenth century but in the seventeenth." "It seems plain," he says, "that the great bulk of those burned under Mary were Puritans"; and he adds, what is not perhaps so capable of proof, that "under Elizabeth we have to look, with rare exceptions, among the Puritans and Recusants for an active and religious life." It was not till the Restoration, it was not till Puritanism had shown all its intolerance, all its narrowness, and all its helplessness, that the Church was able to settle the real basis and the chief lines of its reformed constitution. It is not, as Mr. Gladstone says, "a heroic history"; there is room enough in the looseness of some of its arrangements, and the incompleteness of others, for diversity of opinion and for polemical criticism. But the result, in fact, of this liberty and this incompleteness has been, not that the Church has declined lower and lower into indifference and negation, but that it has steadily mounted in successive periods to a higher level of purpose, to a higher standard of life and thought, of faith and work. Account for it as we may, with all drawbacks, with great intervals of seeming torpor, with much to be regretted and to be ashamed of, that is literally the history of the English Church since the Restoration settlement. It is not "heroic," but there are no Church annals of the same time more so, and there are none fuller of hope.

But every system has its natural and specific danger, and the specific English danger, as it is the condition of vigorous English life, is that spirit of liberty which allows and attempts to combine very divergent tendencies of opinion. "The Church of England," Mr. Gladstone thinks, "has been peculiarly liable, on the one side and on the other, both to attack and to defection, and the probable cause is to be found in the degree in which, whether for worldly or for religious reasons, it was attempted in her case to combine divergent elements within her borders." She is still, as he says, "working out her system by experience"; and the exclusion of bitterness--even, as he says, of "savagery"--from her debates and controversies is hardly yet accomplished. There is at present, indeed, a remarkable lull, a "truce of God," which, it may be hoped, is of good omen; but we dare not be too sure that it is going to be permanent. In the meantime, those who tremble lest disestablishment should be the signal of a great break up and separation of her different parties cannot do better than meditate on Mr. Gladstone's very solemn words:--

The great maxim, _in omnibus caritas_, which is so necessary to
temper all religious controversy, ought to apply with a tenfold
force to the conduct of the members of the Church of England. In
respect to differences among themselves they ought, of course, in
the first place to remember that their right to differ is limited
by the laws of the system to which they belong; but within that
limit should they not also, each of them, recollect that his
antagonist has something to say; that the Reformation and the
counter-Reformation tendencies were, in the order of Providence,
placed here in a closer juxtaposition than anywhere else in the
Christian world; that a course of destiny so peculiar appears to
indicate on the part of the Supreme Orderer a peculiar purpose,
that not only no religious but no considerate or prudent man
should run the risk of interfering with such a purpose; that the
great charity which is a bounden duty everywhere in these matters
should here be accompanied and upheld by two ever-striving
handmaidens, a great Reverence and a great Patience.