THE

FREE CHURCHMAN.

JANUARY, 1868.

THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH.

IT

is a part of the creed of Christendom that there is a Holy Catholic Church. To a large number of persons who are supposed to hold this belief, these words must of necessity convey a very vague and ill-defined meaning. They are probably not connected in the mind of many churchmen with any definite ideas, and when used by them express only a sort of half belief. The explanations of preachers and of writers on the Creed effect very little in the way of giving precision or substance to the dogma. Few persons ever ask themselves what is meant by a corporation that is holy, or how a church which is localised in space, and limited in the number of its members, can be said to be universal. If we might venture to put into words the actual belief of the average churchman, it would be something like this: I believe in the Holy Catholic Church. He means to say that the church to which he belongs is a very venerable and august institution, that in some sense it is divine, more so than any of the institutions of civil society: that it had a divine origin, and is sustained by a divine power; that it is intended to be universal, and is called Catholic, partly from that cause, and

partly because it is open for all to enter; and, that in all probability the time is not far distant when Jews, Turks, Infidels, Romanists, Dissenters, and all the Heathen will acknowledge its supremacy, enter its fold, and partake of its blessings.

A modified form of this belief is held also by many persons who are not members of the Established Church. Those Nonconformists, who are not much given to examine the foundations on which their churches rest, have a notion that they are exact copies in every particular of the societies that met in Jerusalem and elsewhere in the Apostolic age. They could not say that the church is the incarnation of the Holy Ghost, but they feel that the church as a church, and because it is a church possesses, and can confer advantages which are not to be gained outside its pale. They look with peculiar reverence on their ecclesiastical institutions and customs, and would not hesitate to say that they are in a very special sense divine and sacred; and that they are so, not because the purposes for which they exist are divine, not because of the quality of their aims, but because they were divinely instituted, and are divinely sustained.

When beliefs such as these are at all sharply interrogated it is usually found that they have not much to say for themselves by way of historical evidence. To those who hold them there seems a natural fitness in them; and others, who do not hold them may admit there are advantages connected with them. They supply the mind with an object of reverence, and they excite anticipations, which are themselves not without happiness, of a happy future. Halfbeliefs are proverbially tolerant, and these are for the most part opposed to extreme views; a mild and tolerant churchman refuses from the charity he feels towards his neighbour to share the audacious demands of the Anglican Sacerdotalists, and the Nonconformist is disqualified by his education from accepting the fictions of Episcopal succession. To both alike, looking at the present condition of the Establishment, and considering what has been the course of affairs for the last two hundred years, the pretension of the clergy to Catholic unity is simply preposterous. One effect which may be anticipated from the pertinacity with which this and other pretensions are set forth

is that religious people generally will be led to inquire what is the nature of a church, and what are the claims of any and all of the existing churches to the respect which they demand. A weekly newspaper, one of the organs of the High Church party, a short while since contributed to our knowledge of ecclesiastical opinion by a series of very ably written articles on this and other subjects. In one of these articles we find the whole argument in favour of the Holy and Catholic Church, very clearly set forth. It will facilitate our enquiry if we allow this writer to speak on his own behalf, and to state in his own words a doctrine which needs care in its expression. Very properly he tells us, that the doctrine of the incarnation is the corner-stone of Christian theology; and with practical aim he asks: How is the incarnation made available for our wants? Is there an appointed channel through which the blessings of the Incarnation flow down to men?

These questions find their answer in "The Church, which is, as it were, a second incarnation, an incarnation of the Holy Spirit, the third Person in the Holy Trinity, even as Jesus Christ was an incarnation of the eternal Word, the second Person." We are told that, "when our blessed Lord, by His ascension into heaven, withdrew His natural body from the earth, He did, almost immediately after, by the Holy Ghost, establish and constitute the Church as His mystical body-a living temple in which He should dwell by the Holy Ghost, and by means of which he could give His grace to those who, as living stones, were builded into its walls." The sum of the matter is, that the Church is the channel through which, according to divine ordinance, the blessings of the Incarnation are conveyed to mankind; and that by union to this mystical body, or divine organism, individuals become partakers of the blessings of the Incarnation. There is no doubt in our minds that these words contain a very important truth, but they also involve some most pernicious errors. We believe that there is a church which is actually holy and catholic; that it is the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, and that it is greater than all the visible churches which exist now, or ever have existed. In the New Testament it is spoken of as "the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, an innumerable company of angels,

the general assembly and church of the firstborn." It is wider than any one church, and than all the churches united. It is the "whole family in heaven and earth," and contains some who are to be found in no earthly ecclesiastical society, and it may exclude some whose names are greatly honoured in the visible church. Such is the truth, or a part of the truth, which we find in this and similar statements. The error becomes manifest when we enquire which of the visible aud so called churches is the holy and catholic one. The answers given to this question are very varions, alike only in this, that they are mutually exclusive, and hence, as it seems to us, are destructive of their claim to catholicity. The most pretentious of the various churches in this country is the Established Church. It has of late years set up claims to a homage which, considering the assumption with which it is demanded, is almost intolerable. The definition which its articles give is, that "a visible church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in the which the pure word of God is preached, and the sacraments be duly administered according to Christ's ordinance in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same." To this in practice are added what are called "the notes " of a true church, which are, for the most part, mere artificial contrivances to identify the Church with Christ's kingdom, and are the results of the modern development of sacerdotalism. By means of these contrivances, and an appeal to doubtful traditions, the Church, the mystical body, which is the incarnation of the Holy Ghost, is marked off, and distinguished by the possession of organs of communication,-the sacraments. These sacraments, we are sometimes told, are themselves supernatural. They are supernatural in their origin and institution, they belong to a supernatural economy, and they are channels for the communication of supernatural grace." The writer from whom we have taken this description of the Church, shows that he is fully alive. to the objections which may be brought against his theory. He is not more at home in the ancient fathers of the Church, than in the works of modern and dissenting divines. He is aware that the sects, as he calls all without the pale, " deny that the Church is God's appointed organism for communicating to men the blessings of the Incarnation." He knows that the adversaries

of the Church take their stand on the assertion that the Holy Spirit was given, not to the visible and particular Church, but to the general and invisible: he adds, "it is here that the battle of the faith-for it is nothing short of this-must be fought."

The issue which is thus raised is a very distinct one, and easily appreciable by all minds. We need not say that in the lines of battle thus formed, we are among "the adversaries of the faith." In our opinion, this theory of the church is contradicted alike by the facts of history and of its present existence. Whether judged by the New Testament records, or by the effects it has produced and does produce on society, it is shown to be in no other way divine and supernatural than that the intentions of its founders were sometimes in accordance with the mind of the spirit, and some of its purposes bear relation to the spiritual nature of man. As we view it, the church is, or, more properly speaking, the churches are human institutions, originated and suggested by the necessities of society, and constructed according to the view current at the time of their formation of the nature of Christianity. Among the many sects which exist, it is only reasonable to suppose that there will be many varieties of this opinion, some more, some less divergent from the High Church standard. The statement which follows may be considered, even by some "Free Churchmen," to be extreme, and to yield less reverence to the church than from its nature and origin it can fairly claim. It is, however, the only common basis which we can discover, on which the various and, apparently, conflicting churches can rest. If they could all admit that they have no other basis than that which history and expediency give them, they would be less antagonistic, more lenient to what they conceive to be the deficiencies of each other, and more susceptible of feelings which would permit of their practical union. But without further preface, let us examine the process by which the conviction is formed that the church, as a body in which the sacraments are duly administered, was instituted by Christ, and is the only channel of His blessings to the world.

Accepting the order of thought which is imposed upon us by those whose writings we are considering, we will examine