The Church of England cleared from the charge of Schism

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Allies Thomas William. The Church of England cleared from the charge of Schism

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THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND CLEARED FROM. THE CHARGE OF SCHISM

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The course of events, for some time past, has been such as to force upon the most faithful sons of the Church of England the consideration of questions which they would rather have left alone, as long ago settled; for the nature of these questions is such, not to speak of their intricacy and painfulness, as almost to compel the student to place himself, as it were, ab extra to that community, which he would rather regard with the unreasoning and unhesitating instinct of filial affection. One of these questions, perhaps the first which directly meets and encounters him, is the charge of Schism brought against the Church of England on account of the events of the sixteenth century, and her actual state of separation from the Latin communion, which has been their result. Time was, and that not long since, when it might have been thought a sort of treason for one who ministers at the altars of the Church of England, and receives by her instrumentality the gift of Life, so much as to entertain the thought, whether there was a flaw in the commission of his spiritual mother, a flaw which, reducing her to the condition of a sect, would invalidate his own sonship. And certainly the treatment of such a question must be most painful to any one, who desires to be obedient and dutiful, and therefore to be at peace. How can it be otherwise, when, instead of eating his daily portion of food in his Father's house, he is called upon to search and inquire whether indeed he have found that house at all, and be not rather a fugitive or an outcast from it. Such, however, is the hard necessity which is come upon us. Let no one imagine that it is our choice to speak on such subjects. We are in the case of a beleaguered soldier in an enemy's country; he may not think of peace; he must maintain his post or die; his part is not aggression, but defence: the matter at issue is the preservation of all that he holds dear, or extermination. The question of schism is a question of salvation.

But over and above the general course of events which forces us to reconsider this question, circumstances have taken place in the past year which we may boldly pronounce to be without a parallel in the history of the Church in England since she became divided from Catholic communion. Those who have followed with anxious sympathy that great restorative movement which, for twelve years, has agitated her bosom, – those who have felt with an ever increasing conviction, as time went on, and the different parties consolidated and unfolded themselves, that it was at the bottom a contest for the ancient faith delivered to the saints, for dogmatic truth, for a visible Church, in whom, as in a great sacrament, was lodged the presence of the Lord, communicating Himself by a thousand acts of spiritual efficacy, against the monstrous and shapeless latitudinarianism of the day; against the unnumbered and even unsuspected heresies which have infected the whole atmosphere that we breathe; against, in fine, the individual will of fallen man, under cover of which the coming Antichrist is marshalling interests the most opposite, and passions the most contradictory; and further, those not few nor inconsiderable, we believe, who, by God's grace, owe to the teaching of one man in particular a debt they never can repay, – the recovery, perchance, of themselves from some form of error which he has taught them to discern, or the building them up in a faith whose fair proportions he first discovered to them, – these will feel with deeper sorrow than we can express the urgency of the occasion to which we allude. For how, indeed, could the question, whether the Church of England is fallen into schism, or be, as from the laver of their regeneration they have been taught to believe, a member of that one sacred Body in which Christ incarnate dwells, – how could this question be so forced upon their minds, as by the fact that her Champion, whom they had hitherto felt to be invincible, who had seemed her heaven-sent defender, with the talisman of victory in his hands, of whom they were even tempted to think

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But these last words of St. Cyprian are so remarkable in themselves, and have such a bearing on the present Papal claims, that they deserve further notice. Now, lest we should imagine that St. Cyprian was hurried away by the ardour of his defence of a favourite doctrine, and his sense of the Pope's severity, into unjustifiable expressions concerning the rights of Bishops, it so happens that we possess the comment of the greatest of the Fathers on these very words. St. Augustin, writing 140 years after, and fully agreeing with the judgment of Pope Stephen, as had the whole Church finally, quotes the whole passage. "'It remains for us each to deliver our sentiments on this matter, judging no one, nor removing any one, if he be of a different opinion, from the right of communion.'22 There he not only permits me without loss of communion further to seek the truth, but even to be of a different judgment. 'For no one of us,' saith he, 'sets himself up to be a Bishop of Bishops, or by fear of his tyranny compels his colleagues to the necessity of obedience.' What can be more gentle? What more humble? Certainly no authority deters us from seeking what is the truth: 'since,' he says, 'every Bishop according to his recognised liberty and power possesses a free choice, and can no more be judged by another than he himself can judge another:' certainly, I imagine, in those questions which have not yet been thoroughly and completely settled. For he knew how great and mysterious a sacrament the whole Church was then with various reasonings considering, and he left open a freedom of inquiry, that the truth might by search be laid open… I cannot by any means be induced to believe that Cyprian, a Catholic Bishop, a Catholic Martyr, and the greater he was the more in every respect humbling himself, that he might find grace before God, did, especially in a holy Council of his colleagues, utter with his mouth other than what he carried in his heart, particularly as he adds – 'But let us all await the judgment of our Lord Jesus Christ, who singly and alone has the power both of setting us up in the government of His Church, and of judging our proceedings.' Under appeal then to so great a judgment, expecting to hear the truth from his colleagues, should he offer them the first example of falsehood? God avert such a madness from any Christian, how much more from Cyprian. We possess then a free power of inquiry, admitted us by Cyprian's own most gentle and true language."

Who can conclude otherwise than that St. Augustin in the year 400, as St. Cyprian in the year 256, was utterly ignorant of any such power as is now claimed for the See of Rome, under cover of that original Primacy to which both these great saints have borne indubitable witness? For the words of St. Cyprian, attested and approved by St. Augustin, contain the most explicit denial of that power lodged in the see of Rome as distinct from an Œcumenical Council, by which alone, if at all, the Church of England has been declared schismatical and excommunicate.

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