LECT. XVI.] THe evangelical PARTY ALSO SCHISMATICS.

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The London Christian Observer, for January, 1839,1 in speaking of the Oxford monument to be erected to the memory of Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, urges as a reason for some monumental building, in preference to a church, that the pulpit of a church might be made to proclaim opinions in direct contrariety to those of these reformers; "especially in a diocese, the ecclesiastical ruler of which-melancholy to relate has for several years been countenancing the doctrines and actions of the most insidious and dangerous body of men that ever obtruded itself within the precincts of the English church."

Nor are these divines, on the other hand, at all reluctant in returning these complimentary manifestations of the unity of the Anglican church. Take an example from an editorial address, in the last number of the The Church of England Quarterly Review, which contains the following passage:"

"The doctrine that regeneration uniformly takes place in baptism is so clearly taught by the Church of England, and involved in its general procedure, that we hesitate not to say, that the only honorable course, which can be pursued by those who hold the contrary opinion, is to abstain from agitating her communion by their preaching, which they must do, if only commonly honest and consistent, and to cease, also, to eat her bread, and to fill those pulpits which can only be conscientiously occupied by her sincere and cordial members.

"The doctrine of the total depravity of human nature is another instance of the perversion of scripture, and of contrariety to the sentiments of the Church of England, chargeable upon some of the clergy called evangelical; but it is, unhappily, too consistent with the Calvinistic notions of election and regeneration."

Thus quietly are the whole evangelical party discarded as unsound members!3

Dr. Hook thus speaks of the evangelical or low-church party in the episcopal church: "I am opposed to the opinions maintained by those who call themselves low-churchmen, on this ground: I believe it to be only on account of their being bad logicians, that they are not socinians."

1) P. 64.

2) The Belfast Christian Patriot, vol. ii. No. 95.

3) It is explicitly declared by these Oxford tractitians, that there can be no real alteration in what they avouch to be the doctrines of the church without a schism. (London Quart. Rev. Ap. 1839, p. 313.) 4) Lond. Chr. Obs. 1839, p. 234.

5) "We heed little," say the editors of the Observer, "what Dr. Hook,-who, when he had a purpose to serve, assailed his meek and holy diocesan, Bishop Rider, in print, in an undutiful and overbearing, not to say contemptuous, manner,may think either of good churchmanship or sound divinity; but with regard to his assertions, we reply,

"Those professed members of the establishment," says Crabbe,1 "who affect the title of evangelical, and wish to palm upon the church the peculiarities of the calvinistic doctrine, and to ingraft their own modes and forms into its discipline, are schismatics."1

The London Christian Observer complained of the Oxford tractators for applying unseemly names to dissenters. In volume fourth of the Tracts, these writers justify themselves by showing that they applied these epithets to parties within the church and not to those without. "Another remarkable exhibition of the same science is your asserting that one of the tracts called the dissenters 'a mob of tiptops, gapes and yawns,' (pp. 172, 174, 177, 185, 186.) Five times you say or imply it. Now it so happens that the tract in question has nothing to do with dissenters; but with persons who wish alterations in the liturgy on insufficient grounds, a circumstance which in itself excludes dissenters."

"Yawn is a farmer whose sons go to the church school; and he himself, 'scarcely ever,' as he boasts, 'misses a Sunday,' coming into the service 'about the end of the first lesson.' Ned Gape, too, is a church-goer, though a late one. In what sense then, Mr. Editor, do you assert that when Richard Nelson, in the end of the story, says that he 'cannot stand by and see the noble old prayer book pulled to pieces, just to humor a mob of Tiptops, Gapes and Yawns,' that the writer calls dissenters by

these titles ?"

In a book entitled "The Oxford Tracts, the Public Press and the Evangelical Party," by G. Percival, it is said: "The evangelical party in the church are only restrained, from the accident of their position, from the destructive power of rationalistic and socinian principles; the spirit is already there, only its full development is restrained."

While these parties in the English church thus denounce each other; the prelatical or high-church party, as certainly cut themselves off from the communion of all other churches on earth. For, from the Roman catholic church they are most peremptorily-in common with all other sects-excommunicated. So also are they regarded by the Greek and other Oriental churches, as a schismatical, and withered branch of the

first, that we know not of any body of persons who call themselves by the nickname of 'low-churchmen,' though we do of some who mounted on Romanist stilts, are pleased so to denominate all true reformation

principle members of the Anglican communion; and, secondly, that his accusation falls upon the Church of England."

1) English Synonymes, p. 480. 2) Eng. ed. Pref. p. 31.

LECT. XVII.] THE PRELATIC CHURCH SELF-CONDEMNED.

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true church. Nor are they satisfied with this exclusion from the greatest portion of the church catholic. They voluntarily pronounce a sentence of excision upon themselves, from nine tenths of the protestant world; and thus with infatuated folly, while making pretensions to be THE ONLY AND TRUE CATHOLIC CHURCH, reduce that universal church to the limits and dimensions of their own comparatively feeble denomination.1

To crown this climax, it will be our object to show, before closing this discussion, that prelatists, both of the Roman and the Anglican school, have been, and are still, justly charged with schism, by all non-prelatical churches;-not for the same reason indeed, but upon the ground of their unchristian pretensions, and that intolerant and anathematizing conduct, by which they attempt to establish a supremacy over the church of God.

Most certain it is, from this review, that the definition ordinarily given of schism, needs to be itself defined, since its authors apply it most appropriately, as they think, to things which, by all ordinary rules of judgment, would appear to be opposites. In order therefore to see our way clear through this mist, and to escape from this sinking bog, into which we have been plunged, by attempting to trace out the course of our prelatical legislators, we must endeavor to ascertain what, after all, is to be understood by schism. And, as it is on all hands asknowledged to be a violation of that unity which is characteristic of the christian church, and its opposite; by understanding in what this unity consists, we shall at once arrive at a true knowledge of the nature of schism.

Though on this subject we shall again speak, it will be neces

1) "These remarks are meant to apply, not to the Church of England, but to a party-we are sorry to say, the dominant party—in that church. A party, whose doings implicate her character, if they do not involve her destiny.

"There are three Church of England Reviews at the present time; one of them is Puseyite, another semi-Puseyite, but all anti-evangelical. The fountains of theological literature, the episcopal bench, and a vast majority of the dignified and beneficed clergy, are tainted with a spirit which differs from popery less than the blossom does from the seed."

"They have withdrawn their countenance from all dissenters, great and small, and given prominence to two great principles, by which they have cut themselves off from the church of Christ through

out the world. The first is, that there cannot be a church, nor any scriptural sacraments, unless holy orders have descended through an uninterrupted line of bishops from the days of the apostles. This principle excludes the continental churches, the church of Scotland, the British and Irish dissenters, as Iwell as all the American churches, except the episcopalians and Moravians. But even these are cluded by the second principle, which makes the validity of the clerical functions depend on a civil establishment and the consequent sanction of the magistrate. This schismatical tendency has been exhibited in the most offensive forms, at a time when all other churches are longing and laboring for union among themselves." Belfast Chr. Patriot.

ex

sary to make some remarks. Now as there is but one supreme and spiritual head of the church, so is there but one universal body of which Christ is thus head; and this body is composed of all who shall be gathered together in Him, from amid the trackless wastes and ages of time, and who, TOGETHER, shall compose the family in heaven. By the unity of the church, we understand, therefore, that, as there is but one God and Saviour, so ALL who believe and obey the gospel are equally adopted into the family of heaven; equally enjoy all the promised blessings of salvation, are equally entitled to the free use of all the means of grace,-are baptized into one faith;1 and are called, justified, and sanctified, through the same plan of redeeming love and mercy. The unity of the christian church,as we shall clearly show in our lectures on the nature of a true apostolical succession, is not to be looked for in any uniformity in rites, ceremonies, or ecclesiastical customs;-nor in any identity as to church forms, polity or order;-nor in any subjection to one earthly head, or one ecclesiastical polity.*

But the unity of the church consists essentially in the unity of the faith whereby all its members equally hold the same divine truths; and in the unity of the spirit, or that oneness, which subsists between Christ its head, and all its members, and whereby the same spirit dwells in all, and works in all the same christian graces."

There is a very important distinction to be made between union and unity. The one may very clearly exist where the

1) See the Author's Eccl. Catech.

of the Presb. Ch.

2) 24 p. 15, ed. 2d.

3) See Lect. xx. and xxi.

4) Eccl. Catech. pp. 15, 16.

5) Author's Eccl. Cat. p. 16, ed. 2d.

6) This is not, however, the opinion of the Rev. Thomas H. Vail, as his opinions are developed in his "Comprehensive Church, or Christian Unity and Ecclesiastical Union," (Hartford, 1841.) He sets out with the declaration that "the writer is convinced that christian union can NEVER be effected (and of course never yet has existed,) except upon some plan of ECCLESIASTICAL UNITY." (Ch. i. p. 25.) "It is EVIDENTLY a scriptural truth, that the church must be one body, BOTH IN RESPECT OF ITS EXTERNAL UNITY, AND OF ITS INTERNAL UNITY; and this truth has been acknowledged by christians of every name, and in every age, the present as well as the past." (p. 27.)

In our humble judgment, this is not a truth, and has always been practically denied by christians of every age, and is the seminal principle and basis of the papacy and of all spiritual tyranny and oppression, and to be utterly rejected by every spiritual freeman. No wonder that from this axiomatic assumption our author came to describe as comprehensive, the self-enclosed boundaries of the limited prelacy; and to regard as universal those peculiarities which are eschewed, as without scriptural support, by a large and growing mass of protestant christendom. If unity is a necessary mark of the true church, then were the apostolic churches no true churches of Christ, for they were divided among themselves; nor has there ever existed such a church from their time until the present.

"The Church of England," says Dr. Hawks, "and the protestant episcopal church in the United States, are now both in "the unity

LECT. XVII.] UNITY AND UNION DISTINGUISHED.

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other is wanting. There may be unity in sentiment, in doctrine, and in feeling, where there is no union in any organized denominational government, under the same rules and the same laws. As it regards the christian church,-where there is concurrence in the same essential and fundamental doctrines which are characteristic of that mystical body,-there, is christian unity, the unity of the spirit. But those principles of doctrine and order which were made necessary to be believed, in order to a full communion with the church of Christ, for the first three centuries, may be firmly held and retained, where there are separate organizations under independent rulers, and under ecclesiastical laws differing from each other on many points, not regarded as within the limits of articles which are fundamental. There may, in this case, be christian unity where there is no ecclesiastical union. These various churches may all be members of the one christian family; may all recognize the one head or parent of that family; may all receive their being from Him, and be united together by the ties, as it were, of a blood relationship; and this, too, although, like the brethren of too many human families, they have become a divided household, and alienated from each other in spirit, and in many of their views.

"UNION is preserved," says Dr. Hawks in his Constitution of the Episcopal Church, "by means of subordination to the same ecclesiastical law, and a common ecclesiastical ruler; UNITY by an adherence to the same common faith of the gospel."

On no other ground than this, can ANY CHURCH IN EXISTENCE, for one moment substantiate a claim to the character and being of a church of Christ. For if UNION (as thus defined) is necessary to the perpetuation of the christian church, then, as

of the catholic church," though "under different systems of polity."

"All communion of churches," says Dr. Owen, (Wks. vol. xx. p. 291,) "as such, consists in the communion of faith and love, in the administration of the same sacraments, and common advice in things of common concernment. All these may be observed, when, for sundry reasons, the members of them cannot have local presential communion in some ordinances with each church distinctly."

"There may be unity even where there are differences and separation, just as there are laws of war wherein all agree. (See Leslie's Short Methol with the Romanists, Edinb. 1835, p. 13.) "As all nations upon the earth are one kingdom to God, so all christian churches are one

church to Christ, without any universal monarch in either case," or identity of laws, officers or government. (See ibid, p. 15.) "When the fathers speak of the church, they mean not any particular church, but the whole body or church of christians, though divided into many nations or churches." (Ibid, p. 18.) "The unity of the church was then understood, not as being united under one supreme bishop or church, but in the concord and good agreement of the several churches among themselves, and in the unity of the common faith." (Ibid, p. 19. See also pp. 174, 183.)

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.on unity in saving or damning principles and practices, in love and charity, for which chiefly we shall be judged at the last day." (Ibid, p. 180.)