May 3, 1857
“Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast, and repent.” Revelation iii. 3.
I spoke, two Sundays ago, on the strength of the Protestant principle. I spoke last Sunday on the strength of the Catholic principle. What was the first? If we took the leader of the German Reformation as our standard for judging of it,—and we were bound to do so, seeing that he received it through the greatest conflicts of mind, and that no teacher has exercised so great an influence in his own day and ever since—Protestantism signified a demand of the individual Conscience for peace and reconciliation with God; a demand for deliverance from all internal accusations, from all outward arrangements or decrees, which interfered with the attainment of that reconciliation, and with the regulation of the whole life and conduct upon the basis of it. “God hath justified me a sinner, hath made peace with me. No doctors, no ecclesiastical authority, no fears of my own heart, no recollection of past evil, no sense of present evil, no conspiracy of the powers of darkness in the invisible world, shall take that peace or justification from me. I may believe in God the Justifier, in opposition to all these. I must believe, or I have no ground to stand upon: I sink into sin, death, hell, if I do not.” This was Luther’s proclamation; this is living Protestantism. By its own nature it repels dilutions, refinements, the skilful phrase-turning of the dialectician, the good-natured irenicum of the statesman: all reason would convince us that it must; its whole history proves that it does. These experiments, in every possible variety, in the most skilful hands, with the mightiest motives of interest, of affection, apparently of charity, to favour their success, failed utterly at the time of the Reformation, and have failed every time when they were needed to quell actual feelings, energetic purposes since. They pleased those who did not feel the battle to be one of life and death, who only wanted an excuse for indolence and indifference; the rest clung to their convictions, and cast the compromises to the winds.
How was it in the other case? We had no need to throw ourselves back into a distant age, or to study the circumstances of some foreign land, before we answered the question. Here, among ourselves, are cries for Catholic unity, Catholic guidance, Catholic absolution, Catholic sacrifice, Catholic sympathy with departed saints, Catholic hopes for those who are not saints. These cries, though mixed with much vanity, much uncertainty of purpose, alternations of weakness and violence, no contempt or denunciation can put down. Mere external tokens of recognition, mere plausible concessions, if accepted with a show of gratitude one moment, are cast aside with indignation the next. To obtain what looks like a satisfaction of these cravings, men are found willing to make sacrifices of self-interest, of personal affection, of traditionary sympathy. Nay, the half-believed promise that there is a Church in which they may find what they are seeking, tempts numbers to accept dogmas which they hope they may be able one day not to regard as false and dangerous. You may say that the sixteenth century was a time of religious excitement, of strong belief, of intense exclusiveness; but here in the nineteenth century, in a time of devotion to mechanical and mercantile pursuits, of weak belief, of desire for comprehension, you are encountered with tendencies which will as little submit to any balancing or eclectical treatment as those which are apparently most opposed to them.
Such a conclusion sounds very disheartening; especially disheartening to members of the English Church. For a large section of our divines has always been of opinion that we were meant to occupy the position which upon this showing must be untenable. And this has not only been a theory of theologians, which they have been able to vindicate by much strong evidence deduced from the history of our Reformation, and indeed of our ecclesiastical polity from its very commencement until now. It has also been favoured by the instincts and habits of the English character, by that deeply-grounded feeling, which has given to your profession so much of its peculiar worth as well as of its peculiar danger, that there is something to be said for each party in a dispute; that the right is not, strictly speaking, in either, but in a judgment which results from a comparison of them both. This national temper certainly looks favourable to compromises. For a long time it does favour them; but as it is essentially a practical temper, scornful of that which has only a paper existence, eager for positive results, it soon wearies of whatever it finds utterly inoperative to bring human beings into concord. And then it listens with open ears to those who explain why the Church of our fathers cannot do what it makes pretence of doing. “The Protestant,” say the English sects (and this single word they speak almost with one breath), “has an intelligible position. He confesses our right to judge for ourselves. The Roman Catholic has an intelligible position. He takes that right away altogether, exacts unlimited submission. You have no position at all. You plead for the rights of freethinking against Romanists. You insist upon the right of the Church to decree what should be thought against Protestants. And the reason is plain. If you would merely acknowledge yourselves a sect or religious body, holding the right of Bishops to rule your Society, you would be standing on the same level with us all; you would be claiming the same privileges with us. But you are a State-Church, asserting certain rights which set you above all other sects. You do not like to say that these rights came to you by mere earthly decrees, by Acts of Parliament. You cling therefore to the ideas of prescription and authority which belong to the Romanists, and which condemn your separation from them.” I state as briefly as I can arguments which, as you know, are susceptible of innumerable variations, and which are illustrated by appeals to the experience of all countries where the State does or does not recognize a Church.
These opinions are supported by a class of reasoners who have very little sympathy with the maxims upon which Nonconformists plead for them. The so-called men of progress say: “Naked Protestantism has a tendency to advance. It has shaken off the fetters which hung about the mind of Luther. The Bible is no longer its watchword; justification by faith means something quite different in the nineteenth century from what it meant in the sixteenth. Naked Catholicism, on the other hand, suggests a number of thoughts respecting a comprehensive Humanity. At times it fraternizes with Democracy, becomes almost interchangeable with it. But for soldiers and sovereigns, the thoughts pent up within the Church would be found too strong for its forms and creeds: no doubt one day these will be torn in pieces in most Romish countries, just as the antiquated symbols of Protestantism are giving way in the countries which it has ruled. In both these systems then there is hope. But your Church is simply obstructive. It keeps up the old faith of Protestantism in the dignity of the Bible, in the dogma of justification. It keeps up the notion of a Church which is to guide the thoughts of men and the movements of the world; though it evinces every day more and more clearly its incapacity for that work.”
This charge of incapacity enlists on the same side the sympathy of a third class,—those, I mean, who do not care much for religious controversies or philosophical projects, but whose minds are fixed on the physical and moral wretchedness of our people. The contrast between the material treasures we possess, still more between the spiritual powers we talk of, and the condition of those for the sake of whom both have been bestowed, leads them to exclaim in bitterness: “We should not ask you what you call yourselves, Protestant or Catholic, if you were but doing something to remove the abominations, to renovate the society around you. Whatever body can and will do that has the signs and credentials which we recognize as belonging to a Church. But one which is perpetually arguing about her right to exist and her right to be obeyed, does not impress us with any reverence, does not make us willing to acknowledge powers which seem as if they were scarcely believed in by those who boast of them. A real ship breasting real waves is a goodly spectacle; but ‘a painted ship upon a painted ocean,’ what worth lies in that?”
The persons who upon these different grounds condemn our position as either utterly false or at best as precarious and tottering, are energetic, thoughtful, often benevolent; what shall I say of those who defend it? Are they equally in earnest? Do they know what they are lauding and patronizing? Do they care for it? Is the Church as dear to them as their party or their club? Do they look for any help or guidance from it? Do not they think that it is by some magic to keep the public at large in order, and to let them do much what they like? I am sure that there are many who could answer these questions fearlessly and honestly; I am sure that there is, in the hearts of us all, something much deeper than our words express: else surely those words should make us shudder. How much more gladly should we listen to the bitterest rebukes, or the most unsupported calumnies, that show a sense of the standard at which clergymen ought to aim, and a feeling that the Church is a common heritage and refuge, than to compliments and apologies which signify, if they signify anything, that evil is part of God’s order, and that He has established His Church for the purpose of checking any interference with its sacred and vested privileges! And most of all is that tone of speaking dangerous and disgraceful to us, which appears to indicate that our condition is most safe when we can keep the elements of which our body politic consists, the Protestant and the Catholic, feeble, each balancing and counteracting the other; whereas in very deed we need them both in their fullest vitality, in their utmost concentration, that we may accomplish the tasks which have been committed to us, that we may not utterly lose what we have inherited, that we may not cease at once to be a Nation and a Church.
Therefore I have taken this afternoon the words which were once addressed to the Church of Sardis. That Church is spoken of as one of seven. The writer of the Apocalypse is living amongst them; they know him as the beloved disciple, as the last apostle. But he does not claim any authority over them. He tells them of one living centre, the High Priest of the whole family, the source of illumination to each portion of the family and to its teacher. Christ Himself speaks to each Church. He warns it of its dangers, its characteristic temptations. He awakens it to think of the powers with which it has been entrusted; of its own special work and calling. He says that in overcoming its own temptations, in fulfilling its own work, it may enter into fellowship with the whole society to which it is united, with Him the Elder Brother of that society, with the Father of all. He assures them of His presence and His divine power. When, as in the case of this Church of Sardis, He has seen feebleness, despondency, heartlessness, He foretells whither these are leading, He calls to repentance. If the whole Gospel is not an idle tale, what was true in the first century is true now. The Son of God and of Man—He that was dead and is alive—is the centre of all the portions into which the Church by the arrangements of His providence is divided. Upon the acknowledgement of His presence their unity depends; and to each portion of it He is speaking some words of strength, of warning, of consolation. Are not these the words which he is speaking to the Church of England: “Remember how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast, and repent”?
I. How have we received and heard. We have a sense of something different in our position from that of other Churches. We sometimes boast of the difference; we are sometimes ashamed of it; but we all feel that it is a fact. We cannot rid ourselves of the fact. We cannot rid ourselves of the responsibility which the fact lays upon us. It is true that we received the Reformation in the sixteenth century. It is true also that England did not pass through that crisis in the same way as any Church on the Continent, whether it continued obedient to the Pope or threw off his yoke, passed through the same crisis. There was the same ardent craving awake in the consciences of men for justification and peace. There was the same impossibility of quenching that craving by any acts of divines or politicians. Nevertheless we all feel and confess that the English sovereigns had a direct positive share in the work; that the movement received its direction from them. It was therefore more distinctly national. The emancipation of the King from the Pope was its maxim and its obvious result. The acquisition of a Bible in the language of the nation, of Common Prayers in the language of the nation, was the consequence of this change. These were the signs and pledges of Reformation. With them came other more doubtful signs, such as the dissolution of the monasteries; wherein one discovers the clearest indication of the national feeling in favour of a practical, domestic life, against a religious life, which is inconsistent with that; wherein we discover also the fatal belief in the upper classes that wealth which was needed for the nation, might be fairly seized for the aggrandisement of individuals.
Let all these things be remembered for us and against us. We did receive the Reformation under these conditions of good and evil. We had heard the Gospel itself, we had received the message concerning a Church long before, under conditions different, no doubt, from these, yet not altogether different. At the very first it was a Gospel to the nation through the Kings; at the very first it associated itself with domestic life, with the Anglo-Saxon reverence for women. From the first it was a message concerning a divine kingdom set up in the land, not concerning certain notions or opinions. From the first our people showed themselves far from profound in controversy, but exceedingly vigorous in action: valuing thought for its results in life; able to appreciate a ruler much better than a dogmatist; demanding of a ruler that he should treat them as men, not as things. They clung to the past with reverence, only discarding its traditions, and these reluctantly, when they interfered with the business of the present. They exhibited a vehement feeling of individual existence which might easily become gross selfishness. But they exhibited also a national feeling which was sometimes exclusive and contemptuous, but which was associated with courage, manliness, godliness. It was the inevitable result of this character and of these circumstances that the order of our society was preserved amidst all dangers in its waking. Bishops lasted on as well as kings: both were connected with the life of the nation. The Bible was received as a national book, interpreting to us our relations to the King whom David and Isaiah spoke of; teaching us the method of His government over England and of His punishment of her sins. The Prayer Book too was national, though it could not be exclusively national. It came from Greek and Latin sources; its petitions had been poured forth by men who never heard our tongue or who lived when we were pagans. Still it bound together our classes; the rich and poor in our land joined in the same praises and songs. All had a right to call God their Father in Christ, of whose body they were members; all had a right to say they were fellow-citizens in a heavenly kingdom.
II. These things we have to remember. Are they these also which we have to hold fast? That is my strong belief. I think that if we part with any of these things, or if we retain them with feeble, trembling hands, we cannot execute our own special trust, we cannot do justice to those parties into which our land is divided—we cannot establish any solid reconciliation between them,—we cannot unite their forces against the enemies which are destroying us,—we cannot point out a way of peace to Romanists and Protestants abroad. I say this even in the cases where I am most reluctant to say it. That claim to be a State Church,—to hold a position which is different from the position of men who are not worse than ourselves in any respect,—how often one is inclined to be ashamed of it and to abandon it! How one blushes when it is put forward as a plea for boasting or for contempt! How often it seems as if we should do more justice to the strength of our cause if we could deprive it of all apparent and extraneous advantage! But if this position——to whatever we are indebted for it,—however worthless it may be in itself—however we may have abused it,—enables us to say to our fellow-countrymen and brethren, “We will not submit to be called an episcopalian sect, because we do not want you to consider yourselves as sects. We want you to feel that you are members of a Church, members of Christ, and children of God. And we will rather undergo the humiliation, for such it is, of seeming to rest our cause upon accidents upon which we know in our consciences that we do not rest it, than throw ourselves even from the most insignificant eminence, from the most insecure pinnacle, at the risk of making you think that we are defending a theory or an opinion of ours, not contending for a great social truth in which you, as much as we, are interested;”——so long as it pleases God, therefore, not to show by some manifest tokens that He removes us from this position, I think we are bound by our allegiance to Christ to hold it fast.
With more confidence and earnestness I would hold fast those prayers, those creeds, that catechism, which the men of progress tell us that we must sacrifice to the interests of a general Humanity. For the sake of that general Humanity,—because I believe it is in danger of being utterly trampled upon, or of becoming a trumpery name which has no reality answering to it,—I would keep these treasures, which have been entrusted to us. I can believe in a general, in a universal Humanity, while I believe in Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified dead and buried, descended into Hell, rose again the third day, sitteth at the right hand of God, and shall come again to judge the quick and dead. I can assert that Humanity in the very terms of the Creed, against those who would separate believers from the rest of human beings,——who would exalt the sect of Christians against the race which the Church of Christ, which Christ Himself represents. But if I am deprived of this faith, the word Humanity expresses either an ideal which has never been realized, or else a sentiment confined to a few fine people, or else the aggregate of all the sin and suffering which is scattered over the world.
Again: while we dare to hold fast the lessons of our Catechism, we can say to the Protestant, “We are very dull logicians. We cannot understand your nice distinctions about Faith and Justification. But we are members of Christ; we believe He died for our sins, and rose again for our justification. Do you wish us to have some other faith, some other justification, which is not in Christ? Because we do not intend to seek that other faith and justification. We intend to hold this fast, being assured that it is what you want as well as we.” We can say to the Romanists, “We are children of God; we believe He has adopted us into this universal family in His Wellbeloved Son, and that He has baptized us with His Spirit. Is not that the family to which you belong? Is not that the Spirit with which you are baptized? Because assuredly it is the family to which Bernard and Francis and Bonaventura belonged. They confessed a Pope, as you do; but they believed in Christ. They claimed to be parts of His body; to be sons of His Father. And the Spirit which enabled them to look beyond themselves and beyond their own narrow opinions, and beyond their age,—the Spirit who united them and does unite them still to all countries and all ages,—that was the Spirit, not of the Pope, but of the Father and the Son; and while you and I seek that, we shall have a unity which no Pope ever gave to those who honoured him most, which those who put him in the place of God must consent to lose altogether.”
Now, if the most resolute Protestant and the most resolute Catholic accept this justification and this unity, they can go in the might of the truths which they have learnt by their different and contradictory kinds of discipline,—in the might of the common truth which has bound them together,—to those who are perishing of inanition and luxury, to those who are perishing in the midst of toil, and sorrow, and neglect; and can call upon both to rise up as men, to cast away that which has robbed them of their personal manliness and freedom; to cast away that which has kept them from sympathy and co-operation with each other. They can tell both of their birthrights; they can make both good citizens of a soil which they regarded only as yielding them so much revenue, or as the warrant for so much repining; they can tell both of an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, which is reserved for them at God’s right hand. And why should not the same witness in substance be borne to all the tribes over which England rules, or amongst which her sons have established themselves? Why should they not hear and receive from us the witness of a kingdom of righteousness and truth of which all kingdoms, so far as they exercise righteousness and truth, are the images; from which all that is good and strong in them is derived?
III. But He who said to the Church of Sardis, “Remember, and hold fast,” said also “Repent.” We cannot heed the first commandment unless we heed the last. I have been obliged to admit that the charges brought against us by all our opponents are true. We have made the unsectarian position which God has given us a plea for sectarianism. We have taken the Bible, not as the guide to our feet and the lamp to our path; the inspirer of thought; the awakener of the understanding as well as of the affections; the witness for all sound, manly, national morality; but as if it were a book of sentences, a book of death rather than of life. We have not rejoiced in our prayers, as common prayers which level us all before God; which help us to plead for all, and claim communion with all those who are furthest from us in opinion; which teach us to pray that God will have mercy upon all men; which carry us far beyond our own thoughts and conceptions, to the final triumph of good over evil. We have turned them into selfish prayers; into excuses for self-glorification; into evidences of our difference from the rest of the world. We have not been valiant for God’s truth; but vain of the clever contrivances by which you could convert it into a see-saw between opposing notions. We have therefore not been peacemakers, but exciters of strife and bitterness among those who would not abandon a partial belief for that which seems to them no belief at all. We have not made tradesmen and politicians understand that to cheat and lie is to destroy their own souls and the soul of the nation. We have not preached a gospel to the poor, but have made them think that Christ came to bind chains upon them rather than to set them free from chains. We have not made men who are worshipping cruel and false gods understand that we are sent into the world, by words and acts to testify of a God of Truth and a God of Love.
Nor must I forget that the warnings of Christ respecting sins committed and judgments to come, were addressed first of all to the angels of the Church. The ministers are treated as first in the evil; they are to expect that they will be first in punishment; they are called to be first in repentance for themselves and for all. The lesson must apply to our Church and our age in this point also. How poor then and ineffectual must be any words of admonition or exhortation that proceed from us! How needful that you should learn, not what we say, but what the Spirit says to the Churches! How impossible that any good could come to you, or to us, or to the land, if He who opens and no man shuts, and shuts and no man opens, in whose hand are the seven stars, out of whose mouth comes the two-edged sword, had not Himself been raised on high, to give repentance to Israel—repentance to England—and remission of all our sins!