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CHAPTER X

ECCLESIASTICAL COURTS AND THE

ORNAMENTS RUBRIC

THE fortiter in re was more conspicuous than the suaviter in modo in the statement lately put forth by the Council of the English Church Union. That is usually the case with statements declaring doctrines, whether religious or political. They aim, if drawn up by honest men, at directness and terseness, and avoid rhetoric and vagueness. And the consequence is that they commonly startle persons who are not familiar with such subjects. But it is sometimes good for people to be startled. It sets them athinking, and drives them back on first principles. Now it happens that the sentence which has caused most excitement in the statement of the English Church Union is the one sentence which is capable of the easiest defence. Here it is: We have denied, and we deny again, the right of the Crown or of Parliament to determine the doctrine, the discipline, and the ceremonial of the Church of England.'

This frank utterance has made the cup of Sir William Harcourt's indignation overflow in a torrent of invective. He denounces Lord Halifax as the

ecclesiastical Jack Cade,' leading an open rebellion'; and he declares dogmatically that 'the only reply to this nonsense which it is necessary to give is that the Crown and Parliament, when they enacted the Prayer Book in the teeth of the bishops and the clergy, did determine all the conditions of the Church of England as established by law, and have continued to do so for more than three centuries.' And Sir William goes on to declare that the allegation which he denounces as 'open rebellion' 'is a direct denial of the first principles of the English Reformation, which was the work of the laity for the laity, who also in the tribunals for the final decision of Church functions have provided for themselves a necessary and adequate safeguard.'

I venture humbly and respectfully, but decidedly, not only to traverse every one of these statements, but to prove that the assertion, which Sir William Harcourt has stigmatised as a signal for 'open rebellion,' is nothing more than a platitude of constitutional law. I recognise the temerity of such an assertion in opposition to a distinguished statesman and lawyer, who is, moreover, one of the most formidable intellectual athletes among living controversialists. But I am sure that Sir William Harcourt will be the last to resent my rashness, for he has himself set me the example by sundry excursions into the field of theology, which has lain as much outside his normal studies as that of law has lain outside mine To the law and to the testimony,' then. In opposition to Sir William Harcourt

I respectfully lay down, and shall endeavour to prove, the following propositions :

1. That the English Reformation was much more a political than a theological movement; the professed aim of the Reformers being to liberate the Church and nation from the domination and intermeddling of the Pope. The Reformers disclaimed any intention to create a new Church, or a new creed, or a new ceremonial further than by the abolition of certain abuses and accretions which had in the course of ages got mixed up with the ancient ceremonial of the Church of England. Both clergy and laity appealed to the Church of the Ecumenical Councils (universally accepted) as the standard of faith and worship.

2. That it is incorrect to say that the Crown and Parliament enacted the Prayer Book in the teeth of the bishops and clergy,' and that neither Crown nor Parliament has ever claimed or exercised the right of determining the doctrine, discipline, or ceremonial of the Church without the Church's own sanction.

3. That this implies no derogation from the constitutional supremacy of the Crown in matters ecclesiastical.

1. The first two propositions belong to the region of ecclesiastical history more than to that of law, and there perhaps it is not presumptuous for me to say that I am perhaps more at home-at least I ought to be-than Sir William Harcourt. But his authority would nevertheless be likely to overpower mine, and I shall therefore appeal to names which

Sir William himself will admit to be not inferior to his own.

No man of our time studied the history of the Reformation with a more unbiased mind, a more minute care, or a more comprehensive grasp of the whole subject than Mr. Gladstone. He was singularly well equipped for the task. To a wide and accurate range of reading he added a remarkable aptitude for theological and legal studies, and his eristic discipline in the House of Commons made him sharp to detect a flaw in an argument. Brought up an Evangelical, he began his special study of the Reformation with his mind biased, as far as it was biased at all, in that direction. Having no foregone conclusion to uphold, he kept his mind open to such light as an impartial study of facts might shed upon it. Now this is what Mr. Gladstone says:

With us the question lay simply between the nation and the Pope of Rome, and its first form as a religious question had reference purely to his supremacy. . . That the question of the English Reformation was eminently and specially national; that it was raised as between this island of the free on the one hand, and an 'Italian priest' on the other, is a remarkable truth which derives equally remarkable illustrations from our history. The main subject of contention between the State and the Romanists, or recusants as they were called, was not their adhesion to this or that Popish doctrine, but their acknowledgment of an unnational and anti-national head. To meet this case the oath of supremacy was framed. . . . The British Government required of its subjects the renunciation, not of Popish doctrines, but of the ecclesi

astical supremacy of the Pope. . . . It was not the existing Church as a religious institution, but the secular ambition of the Papal See, against which security was sought by renouncing its jurisdiction.'

Newman's bias, after he became a Roman Catholic, would have been to make the most of the religious question as the motive cause of the Reformation. But he was an honest man and had studied the question conscientiously, and this is his conclusion:

Not any religious doctrine at all, but a political principle, was the primary English idea at that time [reign of Elizabeth] of Popery.' And what was that principle, and how could it best be kept out of England? What was the great question in the days of Henry and Elizabeth? The Supremacy.. .. Did Henry VIII. religiously hold justification by faith only? Did he disbelieve Purgatory? Was Elizabeth zealous for the marriage of the clergy? or had she a conscience against the Mass? The supremacy of the Pope was the essence of the 'Popery' to which, at the time of the Articles, the Supreme Head or Governor of the English Church was so violently hostile.2

Freeman had a religious devotion to the virtue of historical accuracy, and he comes to the same conclusion as Mr. Gladstone and Cardinal Newman:

Nothing was further from the mind of either Henry the Eighth or of Elizabeth than that either of them was

The State in its Relations with the Church, pp. 174, 189–90. 'Apologia, p. 162. The italics are Newman's.