clergyman has left or intends to leave the Church of England in consequence. Not a single clergyman finds it more difficult than before to preach the Gospel to his flock. Not a single member of Parliament has been asked to rescind the decrees of the Privy Council, or the Act of clerical subscription, or the new canon of 1865. On the contrary, the prevailing sentiment with regard to the Court of Appeal is 'rest and be thankful;' the prevailing sentiment, as we have seen, with regard to the change of subscription, is a unanimous and almost enthusiastic acceptance. The Polemics of the Church by this result of the agitation of so many months and years have lost two weapons of incalculable force: they have lost the chance of a clerical tribunal, which would have encouraged a series of interminable litigations; they have lost in the old forms of subscription a magazine of taunts, insinuations, invectives, which have hitherto supplied the want of a host of arguments. The Peacemakers have gained no less incalculably. They have gained a security that the tribunal which has given shelter to all sides of religious opinion will now never again be shaken by the attacks of defeated and disappointed assailants, even although they may freely question the absolute justice of its decision or the validity of its arguments. They have gained the sanction of the legislature and the acquiescence of the Church to the public recognition of that latitude of subscription which must always have been tacitly claimed and granted by all truly honest members and ministers of the Church. The adherents of Tract XC. are, as far as their subscription is concerned, free to handle the XXXIX Articles in as 'catholic a spirit' as they desire, and the adherents of Mr. Gorham may question the propriety of the phrases in the Prayer-book which are repugnant to their peculiar tenets-so long as the two parties re spectively consent to accept the general doctrine of their common Church. Those who believe the Second Epistle of St. Peter, the Apocalypse, and the other books of 'which there was doubt in the Church' during the first three centuries, to be part of 'Holy Scripture,' can now, so far as their subscription is concerned, boldly profess that opinion in spite of its direct denial by the sixth Article. Those who believe that human nature is not wholly evil, that all good works are pleasing to God, and that good heathens may be saved, may openly declare, as far as their subscription is concerned, these sacred truths which, in common with the whole educated world, they have long accepted as part of the Gospel teaching, in spite of their apparent denial by the sixth, the thirteenth, and the eighteenth Articles. Prosecutions, indeed, may still be carried on as they have hitherto been carried on, in courts of law, irrespectively of subscription. Controversies may still turn, as they ought always to turn, on the real merits of the doctrines in question, regardless of the consent given to them by any young clergyman or Master of Arts before he could understand what he was subscribing. But the law and rule itself of subscription is altered so effectually as to leave but a hair's-breadth of difference from its entire abolition. Still the chief gain, after all, is the warning left behind by such a bloodless victory to the spirit of hard recrimination, and capricious respect of persons, which has disfigured our modern controversies, and the encouragement held out to those who, beginning in a small minority, with no followers beyond their own immediate circle, find themselves at last at the head of a vast movement, with the whole Church treading on their heels. And not only to small minorities, but to the whole Church of England, is it a pledge that a great career may yet be before all who have the courage and patience to wait for the gradual unfolding of the drama in which we each of us have to bear our part. No doubt the estrangement of parties within the religious world has been wider, and the chance of obtaining a hearing more difficult, than it was twenty years ago. But the steps gained by the Church through the events of 1864 and 1865 have at least replaced it in the same relative position as that which it held in the days of Archbishop Howley; whilst, on the other hand, the increased interest of the public at large in theological questions gives a wider scope to those who have regained the liberty that seemed to be vanishing from them. To use this liberty as not abusing it; to make it the common inheritance not of one section of the Church, but of all; to accept the approaches of the contending parties as real advances, and not merely as strategic movements, even if they sometimes have that appearance; to build silver bridges for flying enemies, golden bridges for returning friends, this is the task appointed for Freedom, as in the English State, so in the English Church : Grave mother of majestic works, From her isle-altar gazing down. That her fair form may stand and shine, Make bright our days and light our dreams, Turning to scorn with lips divine The falsehood of extremes. 223 THE UNITY OF CHRISTENDOM AND DR. PUSEY'S EIRENICON.'1 THERE are two subjects suggested by the discussion of the work which we have to consider. One is the general subject of the unity, union, or reunion of Christendom. Reunion of The other is the particular mode of approaching this subject dom. in the Eirenicon.' Christen On the general question a few remarks may be needed Ambiguito prevent ambiguity. Reunion itself is a misleading word. It implies that there had once been a time when Christendom was united. It is possible that this may have been the case for a few years, when the small community of Jerusalem was of one heart and one soul. But within a very short period, there were murmurings of the Grecians against 'the Hebrews,' and the Apostle of the Gentiles soon heard that there were divisions amongst his converts,' 3 and those divisions, in one form or another, have continued ever since. When we speak of union, therefore, or reunion, we have to aim not at the representation of an imaginary past, but at the attainment of an ideal future. But, further, the phrase as commonly used is open to the objection that it suggests an organic union under the same ecclesiastical laws and government. It is obvious at 'Substance of two papers read before meetings of the London clergy, and in part printed in the Contem porary Review, 1866. 1 Cor. i. 11; xi. 18. ties of the werd. the outset that such a union is too remote from any practical considerations to be worth discussing at length. If, indeed, by this term were meant merely the right of individuals to partake of the Holy Communion in the respective Churches, there is, on our part, no impediment to the communion of a Roman Catholic or Greek, a Lutheran or a Nonconformist in an English church, if so he desired it, at any moment; and even in the Eastern and Roman Churches, the difficulties in the way of receiving a Protestant to that Sacrament would arise rather from the preliminary accompaniments than from the ordinance itself. But if by the union proposed is meant an authoritative acknowledgment, on the part of the contending Churches, of the same external laws and creed,' it is obvious that the contracting parties are not brought on the scene, even in the most distant manner. There is not alleged the faintest probability of such proposals emanating either on the one side from the Court of Rome, the Emperor of Russia, or the four Patriarchs of the East, nor on the other side from the Crown and Parliament of England, or the Protestant sovereigns and synods of Scandinavia and Germany, or the numerous conventions and conferences of Nonconforming Churches in England and America. Again, even if such an organic union were practicable, it would not be desirable, if urged and accepted on the grounds on which it is put forward in the Eirenicon.' A union between two or even three powerful Churches can hardly be said to be a union or reunion of Christendom, when it deliberately leaves out of consideration the whole range of Non-Episcopal Christians, which, if less powerful, are certainly integral parts of the whole, and have rendered services to Christianity not inferior, in their way, to any rendered by the See of Rome or of Canterbury. 1 Froude's History of England, ch. xxxii., xxxiii. |