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LECTURE III.

THE LIFE OF THE MOVEMENT OF 1833 NOT DERIVED

FROM THE NATIONAL CHURCH.

I

I.

AM proposing, my brethren, in these Lectures, to answer several of the objections which are urged against quitting the National Communion for the Catholic Church. It has been a very common and natural idea of those who belong to the movement of 1833, as it was the idea of its originators, that, the Nation being on its way to give up revealed truth, all those who wish to receive that truth in its fulness, and to resist its enemies, are called on to make use of the National Church, to which they belong, whose formularies they receive, as their instrument for that purpose. I answer them, that their attempt is hopeless, because the National Church is strictly part of the Nation, in the same way that the Law or the Parliament is part of the Nation; and therefore, as the Nation changes, so will the National Church change. That Church, then, cannot be used against the spirit of the age, except as a drag on a wheel; for nothing can really resist the Nation, except what stands on a basis independent of the Nation. It must say and will say just what the Nation says, though it may be some time in saying it. Next, having thus shown that the National Church is absolutely one with the Nation, I proceeded further to show that, on the other hand, the National Church is absolutely heterogeneous from the Apostolic or AngloCatholic party of 1833; so that, while the National Church is part of the Nation, the movement, on the contrary, has no part or place in the National Church. To aim, then, at making the Nation Catholic by means of the Church of England, was something like evangelizing Turkey by means of Islamism; and, as the Turks would feel serious resentment at hearing the Gospel in the mouths of their Muftis and Mollahs, so was, and is, the English Nation provoked, not persuaded, by Catholic preaching in the Establishment.

And I rest the proof of these two statements on incontrovertible facts going on during the last twenty years, and now before our eyes; for, first, the National Church has changed and is changing with the Nation; and secondly, the Nation and Church have been indignant, and are indignant, with the movement of 1833. I conceive that, except in imagination and in hope, there are no symptoms whatever of the National Church preventing those changes of Progress, as it is called, whether in the Nation or in itself, though it may retard them: uor any symptoms whatever of its

welcoming those retrograde changes, to which it is invited under the name of primitive and Apostolical truth. The National Church is the slave of the Nation, and it is the opponent of the Movement; which, after all, has done no more than form a party in the one to the annoyance of the other.

And now I come to a second objection, which shall be my subject to-day. An inquirer, then, may say, "This is a very unfair and one-sided view of the matter. I grant indeed I cannot deny that the movement has but formed a party in the National Church. I grant it has no hold on the Church, that it does not coalesce with it, that it hangs loose of it: nay, I grant that this want of congeniality comes out clearer and clearer year by year, so that the Anglican party has never appeared more distinct from the Establishment, and foreign to it, than at this moment, when State and Bishops and people have cast it off, and its efforts, whether to alter the constitution of the Establishment, or to preserve its doctrine, have failed and are failing. I grant all this; I am forced in fairness to grant it;-or rather, whether I grant it or no, it will be taken for granted by all men without waiting for my granting. But still, so far is undeniable, that that movement of 1833 issued forth from the National Church; this, at least, is an incontrovertible fact: whatever light, life, or strength it has possessed, or possesses, from the National Church was it derived. To the Sacraments, to the ordinances, to the teaching of the national Church, the movement owes its being and its continuance; and, if it be its offspring, it belongs to it, it is cognate to it, and cannot be really alien from it; and great sin and undutifulness, ingratitude, presumption, and cruelty, there must be committed by those who, belonging to the movement, abandon the Church." This is a consideration which is urged with great force against affectionate and diffident minds, and acts as an insurmountable difficulty in the way of their becoming Catholics. It is pressed upon them"The National Church is the Church of your baptism, and therefore to leave it is to abandon your Mother." Now, then, let us examine what is the real state of the case.

2.

We see then, certainly, a multitude of men all over the country, who, in the course of the last twenty years, have been roused to a religious life by the influence of certain principles professing to be those of the Primitive Church, and put forth by certain of the National Clergy. Every year has added to their number; nor has it been a mere profession of opinion which was their characteristic, or certain exercises of the intellect; not a fashion or taste of the hour, but a rule of life. They have subjected their wills, they have chastened their hearts, they have subdued their affections, they have submitted their reason.

Devotions, com

;

;

munions, fastings, privations, almsgiving, pious munificence, self-denying occupations, have marked the spread of the principles in question; which have, moreover, been adorned and recommended in those who adopted them by a consistency, grace, and refinement of conduct nowhere else to be found in the National Church. Such are the characteristics of the party in question; and, moreover, its members themselves expressly attribute their advancement in the religious life to the use of the ordinances of that National Church.

They have found, they say, as a matter of fact, that as they attended those ordinances, they became more strong in obedience and dutifulness, had more power over their passions, and more love towards God and man. "If, then," they may urge, "you confront us with those external facts, which have formed the subjects of your first and second Lectures, here are our internal facts to meet them; our own experience, serious, sober, practical, outweighs a hundredfold representations which may be logical, dazzling, irrefragable; but which still, as we ourselves know better than any one, whatever be the real explanation of them, are, after all, fallacious and untrue."

Here, then, we are brought to the question of the internal evidence, which is alleged in favour of a real, however recondite, connection of the (so-called) AngloCatholic party with the National Church. It is said that, however you are to account for it, there is the

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