SCOTCH DISESTABLISHMENT AND

'PAPAL AGGRESSION.

No. I.

Is there anything to be said by a Scotch bishop in favour of maintaining the Established Church of Scotland? This is a grave and serious question for those who hold, as all our bishops do, an historical position, interrupted indeed more than once under special circumstances and in troublous times, but substantially continued, with or without State support, from the earliest dawn of our Christian civilisation. To this question I shall endeavour to give an answer. In doing so, I shall have occasion to take a wide historical survey, to be followed up by reference to great principles which lie at the root of the welfare, public and private, of all Christian communities. That the Episcopal Church, in which I have the honour to hold office, would be an immediate gainer-very greatly a gainer— in numbers and in influence, if the Church of Scotland as it now stands were to be disestablished, no one acquainted with the present circumstances of the country can have the slightest doubt; and the temptation, therefore, will be strongly felt by many of us to forward rather than to retard that catastrophe. But a larger and more comprehensive view may perhaps incline us to be patient, and in the mean time to seek for a way out of the present critical juncture of ecclesiastical affairs which may lead to a firmer and more secure basis, not only for both establishments, but for Christianity itself in the conflict which it has to wage, both at home and abroad, with infidelity and with heathenism.

My argument will be cast into an analytical rather than a synthetical form. I shall begin by assuming that Christ has laid down for His Church a law of unity so stringent that it admits of no violation; in the words of St. Augustin, Fieri non potest ut aliqui habeant causam justam quâ communionem suam separent a communione orbis terrarum, eamque appellent Ecclesiam Christi'a proposition which I shall hope to establish in a second article. I shall begin, I say, by assuming this proposition; and going back to the time when this law, being carried into effect through the operation of the methods which Holy Scripture and the providence ] Ep. xciii., vol. ii. p. 360.

of God combined to recommend, was virtually adopted throughout Christendom, I shall proceed to show the results which the acceptance of those facts and principles legitimately involves. In all ordinary cases, Church Establishment, to be just and reasonable, supposes a preponderating unanimity of religious sentiments, founded demonstrably upon Scriptural truth. To such demonstration I shall appeal from first to last.

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I. The adjustment of the law of Christian unity, without persecution, and with full toleration for non-conformity and dissent, under the varying circumstances and conditions of states and nations, is a problem which more perhaps than any other has taxed, and still continues to tax, the wisdom and the faith of Christian men. Infinitely elastic in itself, and capable of being applied on the largest or the smallest scale, the system of administration which this law requires bears witness to its Divine origin. Not to enter now into the Scriptural proof, which I have fully produced elsewhere,' for an episcopal or threefold ministry, it is the unbiased testimony of the historian Gibbon that Nulla ecclesia sine episcopo has been a fact as well as a maxim since the time of Tertullian and Irenæus,' two of the earliest Christian writers of the post-apostolic age. After we have passed the difficulties of the first century, we find the episcopal government universally established till it was interrupted,' we shall see hereafter under what circumstances, by the republican genius of the Swiss and German Reformers.' But more than this. Long before the Roman Empire became Christian by profession, this outward form of ecclesiastical jurisdiction had begun to adapt itself to that of the civil polity. Hence arose the great metropolitan or provincial divisions, 118 in number, each including many dioceses (to use this word in its subsequent acceptation); and greater still the fourteen patriarchates, corresponding with the grand divisions of the Empire: among which five were distinguished as pre-eminent or Proto-Patriarchal; and among these again, as Rome was the capital of the entire Empire, so the Roman Bishop became not supreme over the rest, but the first in dignity and precedence among his brethren.

It is true that Rome was also the place in which St. Peter, after leaving Antioch, had exercised for a time his apostolic ministry, in conjunction, as we must conclude, with St. Paul; the one not improbably confining himself to the Jewish converts, while the other laboured among the Gentiles. But the question of Hosius, the presiding bishop, at the Council of Sardica (A.D. 347), 'Doth it please you that we honour the memory of St. Peter?'-this question would

See Outlines of the Christian Ministry delineated and brought to the test of Reason, Holy Scripture, History, and Experience, with a view to the reconcilation of existing differences concerning it, especially between Presbyterians and Episcopalians. 1872. London, Longmans: Edinburgh, Grant.

Chap. xv., notes.

never have been put, if the foundation upon which the claims of the See of Rome are now made to rest had been then acknowledged. The fact is, St. Peter's own position in relation to his apostolic brethren-to St. Paul, to St. John, the Metropolitan of Lydian Asia,' and not least to St. James, the Bishop of Jerusalem 5-was too well known and appeared too plainly on the face of Scripture to allow of any such assumption. Still less was the precedence granted upon. the ground that a visible centre of unity is a part of God's ordinance for the government and welfare of His Church, and that that centre was to be found in the occupant of the Roman See. No! These were the after-thoughts of men unwilling to relinqnish a dignity which they had once enjoyed, but which no longer rested on a legitimate foundation when the reason which gave occasion for it, viz. the pre-eminence of Rome, as the metropolis of the world, had ceased to exist. Some one perhaps may say that the primacy of the Roman Bishop, having never been formally disannulled, ought still to be conceded to him; but, apart from all considerations of his forfeiture of the honour on the score of its grievous and prolonged abuse, the very circumstances which virtually terminated that primacy -viz. the disruption and dismemberment of the Roman Empire-prevented such a course, by rendering it impracticable, in many instances, for the bishops of Christendom (who, as they had originally conferred the privilege, were alone competent to revoke it) to meet together, with the necessary freedom, for that or any other purpose. Be this, however, as it may, it is not the issue which Rome herself has been content to raise. Unhappily her claims became only the more exorbitant, and she attempted to press them everywhere with greater violence, in proportion as the ground upon which they had been raised, fairly or unfairly, became by degrees less and less tenable. Thus a supremacy, which had been never so much as dreamt of in the first ages of the Church, began to be assumed by her when her title to the primacy had become questionable; and, in direct opposition to the course which God's providence pointed out, the fiction of one visible head over the universal spiritual kingdom began to be broached, when the reality of a single monarch extending his dominion so as to form one universal temporal kingdom had passed away-never, we may believe, to return again. Our reasons for this belief are simple and obvious. There was nothing natural, so to speak, in a monster empire like that of Rome, almost coextensive with the civilised world; but it had a mighty purpose to fulfil. St. Paul's appeal to Cæsar was the first great step in God's offer of the Gospel to the acceptance of mankind. Under no other circumstances but such as those afforded by the then state of things could the facilities for the rapid and universal propagation of the See ibid. pp. 58-70.

See Outlines of the Christian Ministry, pp. 25-34.

Gospel have been such as they were. From this point of view the old Roman roads and Roman bridges are an object of interest to the Christian even more than they are to the antiquarian. Nor was this all. It would have availed little to provide for the extension of the faith unless provision had been also made to preserve its integrity, and to secure its truth from the corrupt admixtures of human error. The fact that the four General Councils to which Christendom is indebted to this day for its canonical definitions of the chief and most essential articles of our Christian belief, and to which, at the time of the Reformation, John Knox and Archbishop Cranmer equally appealed against their Romish adversaries—the fact, I say, that these Councils owed their existence to the authority and policy of the Emperors, is a sufficient proof how greatly the wise providence of God was concerned at that early age in adapting the temporal affairs and destinies of nations to the prospective welfare and necessities of His Church. To borrow the words of Mr. Hallam at the commencement of his work on the Middle Ages, Before the conclusion of the fifth century the mighty fabric of empire which valour and policy had founded upon the seven hills of Rome was finally overthrown in all the west of Europe.' Before the conclusion of that same century there had been held at Chalcedon, upon the confines of Europe and Asia, the last of those four great Councils to which I have referred, and the creeds, both Apostles' and Nicene-drawn professedly from no other source but the word of God-had finally received (with the exception, perhaps, of a single clause in the former) the exact form in which we now use them. This is a fact which no one who desires to place the question of unity among Christians in its true light will fail to notice as of the utmost importance. It shows to us that the same God who appointed special orders of men, for the administration and good government of His Church, has provided also special forms or standards of belief for the instruction and confirmation of that ministry, and of the people under them, through their means, in the true faith of the Gospel. Take the two facts together-the fact of the catholic ministry and the fact of the catholic creeds-and they form, as it were, the two wings of the dove,' upon which, whatever may be the disorders of schism or misbelief by which we are encompassed, we may 'flee away and be at rest.' Unhappily this latter fact-that God has given us through His Church, while it was still one and undivided, these catholic or universal creeds-no less than the former fact that he has given us, by the concurrent evidence of Scripture and tradition, a catholic or universal ministry-is now too little regarded. But it was not so in either case at the time of the Reformation. Then, as the true ministry was openly acknowledged even by those who (to their misfortune as they confessed) were not

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See his' Appellation,' A.D. 1558. Works, iv. p. 518 sq.

able to retain it, so these creeds were accepted and appealed to on all hands as genuine symbols of the true faith; and I gladly add, as a sign, if it please God, of good omen, that the same creeds are to be found still occupying the place which was then assigned to them not only in the Roman and Eastern and Anglican standards, but even in the German, both Lutheran and Reformed (i.e, Calvinistic), according to the most recent reprints of their symbolical books.

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But to return to our argument. The responsibility which fell of old upon the sovereign of the Roman Empire, when he became a Christian-for the Apostles of Christ were to be brought before governors and kings for a testimony to them and to the Gentiles-is now shared among those whom God has given to be rulers over His people, and among the people themselves, according to their several kingdoms, nations, and languages. The conquerors who divided between them the empire of ancient Rome, wherever they found Christianity existing, found also an episcopal ministry and the catholic creeds. As the several kingdoms gradually assumed a definite shape and a settled constitution, the obligation of supportting that ministry and retaining those creeds was recognised everywhere, both by rulers and people, not only as among the first duties of government, but as part and parcel of Christianity itself. It was no fanciful application of the prophecies of the Old Testament-such as in the 2nd Psalm, 'Be wise now therefore, O ye kings,' &c., and again in the 49th of Isaiah, Kings shall be thy nursing fathers,' &c.-it was no fanciful application of these prophecies which led directly to this result; and when, with reference to our Presbyterian Eatablished Church, the Duke of Argyll observes without regret that kings have never been its nursing fathers,' it does not appear to have occurred to him that if so, in that respect at least it has failed in fulfilling a Scriptural note of the true Church. In like manner, in the New Testament, even the tenor of the commission for the first preaching of the Gospel, Go ye and teach-or rather make disciples of '-not all men, as individuals, but all the nations,' appeared to point by anticipation to this national reception and establishment of the faith. And might we not say more? Might we not suppose that, as the unity of the Roman Empire had, in its season, a mighty purpose to fulfil, so the dismemberment of that empire was providentially designed to check those tendencies, so injurious both to faith and charity, which began to show themselves in the sixth and seventh centuries-the tendency to define, in articles of doctrine, beyond what is written; the tendency to centralise the administration of ecclesiastical law beyond what is expedient for the

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* See Seckendorf, Hist. Lutheranismi, ii. p. 538. Calvin, de Necess. Reform Eccles. Op. viii. p. 60; also his Letter to the King of Poland, December 1554, Epist. et Resp. p. 187 sqq.; and the narrative of the proposals made by him and Bullinger to King Edward the Sixth, 1549, in Strype's Life of Parker, i. p. 140. Life of Cranmer, i. p. 296. Lutheri Op. viii. p. 591 sq.