THE FIRST PRINCIPLES OF

PROTESTANTISM

I

He

In September 1896 Archbishop Benson of Canterbury paid a visit to Ireland, and at the first public meeting he attended, held in Dublin in aid of the restoration of Kildare Cathedral, he saw opposite the platform a motto, which described the Church of Ireland as "Catholic, Apostolic, Reformed, and Protestant." took occasion to say that we, in England, have not been careful enough to teach our children and the mass of our people the history of the Church of England. "I hope," he said, “we have awakened lately to this matter, and we are now intending to do it far more thoroughly. To you," he added, "the appeal comes most strongly, and you cannot justify those four words, 'Catholic,' 'Apostolic,' 'Reformed,'

you

are." "

and Protestant,' unless you teach everybody have to do with 'why you are what you On October the 9th, two days before his death, he attended, in the Ulster Hall, Belfast, the last public meeting in which he took part, and he recurred to the same thought in very emphatic and impressive words. "I reciprocate," he said, "with my whole soul your most earnest desire that intercourse between our Churches should be constant and complete; that, as we look each other more in the face, we will know each other the better, and live equally in that true faith and fear of God which I saw characterised by a motto at Dublin-the faith taught by that Church, which is at once Apostolic, Catholic, Reformed, and Protestant. There was not one," he proceeded, "of those words that could be spared ; and if ever it was necessary, if ever we began to doubt whether it was necessary, to lay so much emphasis upon that last word"-the word Protestant-" I think that events which have been occurring in the last few weeks, and the tone which has been adopted towards this primeval Church of Ireland and England, are things which warn us

that that word is not to be forgotten." He was referring to the Pope's Encyclical respecting English Orders. "No," he added, "it is not a word to be forgotten; but it is a word to be understood a word which must not be used

as a mere earthly, secular war-cry. Those are words which have a deep meaning for our children, which we should try to penetrate, even better than now, and which we should hand down to them to be cherished for ever."1

There are misconceptions now prevalent respecting the meaning of the word Protestant, which render peculiarly necessary such an endeavour to penetrate its meaning better as Archbishop Benson desired. A clergyman of great authority once spoke of "the disastrous notion that we live in negations, as Protestants, but are unable, or afraid, to put forth positive truth as Catholics." It must be supposed by any one who uses such language that Protestantism consists in protesting against error, and particularly against the errors of the Church of Rome. This misapprehension of

1 'Archbishop Benson in Ireland: a Record of his Irish Sermons and Addresses, 1896.' London, 1896. Pp. 26, 27, 110, III.

the meaning of the word has probably been fostered by an unfortunate expression of Burke, in his letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe in 1792. In that letter he In that letter he urges, in some most instructive observations, that the settlement at the time of the Revolution did not bind the nation barely to a Protestant religion, but to "the Protestant, Reformed religion, as it is established by law." The sovereign, says Burke, by that settlement, "may inherit the Crown as a Protestant, but he cannot hold it, according to law, without being a Protestant of the Church of England." In other words, 'Protestant' is an indispensable qualification of the religion which the sovereign of England is bound to profess, but it is only a qualification, and the substance of that religion is the Catholic form of the Christian religion as established by law among us. But in the course of these important observations he threw out the obiter dictum that "a man is certainly the most perfect Protestant who protests against the whole Christian religion." So that the idea to which Burke has thus helped to give currency is that Protestantism is, at all events in general, a protesting against something, and

in particular against more or less of the religion taught by the Church of Rome. In other words, it would thus be essentially a negative attitude of mind.

It

Ac

Now, let us observe, in the first place, that such an interpretation of the word is inconsistent with its Latin derivation. It is a postAugustan word, and is said, in one of the best dictionaries, to mean "to declare publicly, to bear witness, to testify, and so to protest." seems particularly important, in connection with its historical use, to notice that this is its meaning when employed by a jurist like Ulpian; as, for instance, in the phrase, “quippe protestantur pietatis gratia se id facere." cording to Dr Johnson, the predominant meaning of the word, as used in English, is of the same character. To protest, he To protest, he says, is "to give a solemn declaration of opinion, or resolution ;" and protestation is "a solemn declaration of resolution, fact, or opinion." This is the primary meaning of the word. But, of course, such a protestation may be made in opposition to some other declaration or act, and so the noun protest, says Dr Johnson, had come to mean "a solemn declaration of opinion, com