What is latitudinarianism?

182 Having thus briefly vindicated the Church of England against your sweeping accusation of being a worldly system; shewn - and that even when there has a tide of corruption set in upon a church - separation is contrary to the mind of God; and having suggested some dangerous motives which may be operating upon you, I come to analyse for a moment your improvement, as you think, upon ordinary dissent. For you must know I cannot suffer you to disclaim altogether affinity with common dissenters: the only difference I see between you and them is that, according to the genius of the day, you are more latitudinarian. Until your views came out, it was thought that the dissenting bodies in this country had become grievously lax in their principles in order to effect unity: the followers of John Owen, for instance, changing pulpits with the followers of John Wesley - each party, for the time being, keeping in abeyance those doctrines which were obnoxious to the other. Even the heterogeneous materials of Calvinism, Socinianism, and popery, appeared not long ago combined on the subject of political agitation; and at this moment, in the national system of education for poor Ireland, we see the sad spectacle of representatives of these several classes sitting in conclave to determine how much of what each maintains to be truth is to be sacrificed at the shrine of the popular idol, unity. I, for my part, did not think that latitudinarianism could go beyond this. But you and your brethren have found out a still more comprehensive ground of union. You propose to unite all classes, not by the old-fashioned way of endeavouring to banish "erroneous and strange doctrines" - the fruitful parent of strife - but by cushioning them, and inscribing upon your standard only one or two articles of faith as essential: and really while I admit this, that you have set your seal as a body to any truth, I do not know that I am altogether right, for where is your confession of faith to be found? If you say, In the written word - well, the Socinian professes to find his there too: is he therefore admissible to your communion? I believe not; how then do you exclude him, since you have no defined standard of truth? Why, it is by using a standard stealthily and in private, by secretly defining what is truth. You have your touchstone of error in each of your breasts. The leaders among you appeal to it as occasion requires, and thus the Socinian is excluded; but, by the way, where is the security for your continuing to exclude him? That touchstone of unrecorded opinions within you may change, so that the sentiments which are not congenial to you today may become so tomorrow. Not to diverge, however, from the point - you do exclude the Socinian, though in an unsatisfactory way: do you exclude any others? Roman Catholics? How do I know this? Pascal and Fénelon - and doubtless they have their successors in our day - would be as devotional as any of you in speaking of and extolling Jesus. If you have no other test than this, why the wafer-idolaters may come among you, and be called brethren! If indeed you have your mental touchstone to apply to their views, you are free, I will suppose, from the intrusion of both these obnoxious classes, though I leave it to you to shew your consistency in recognizing what is truth in their cases, and then stopping short. Do you not see, my dear sir, that at the very point your recognition of truth ends, there your admission of error begins? And here is your latitudinarianism. Let men but profess their belief, as your phrase is, "in the blood," and then, whatever be their heterodoxy, they are admissible among you - Baptists and Paedobaptists, Arminians and Calvinists, Millenarians and Anti-millenarians, Quakers, etc. Your cords of union are indeed lengthened, but alas! how superficial the truth they circumscribe! The ordinance of baptism, though a command, cannot be administered among you; the doctrine of God's electing love, the second advent, the agency of the Spirit in the Church, cannot be introduced at your meetings, forsooth, because the moment you touch upon these topics your boasted unity is at an end. Doubtless, it has happened because of the paucity of your numbers, and their select character, being chiefly from the one communion, that you have had somewhat more of liberty than I have described as the tendency of your system (though, by the way, I saw myself the elements of discord working among you at Clifton); but according, I repeat, to your latitudinarian principle, coming together only as believers in the atonement, this liberty you have had does not legitimately belong to you. Just as in the national system of education, when the teacher goes beyond the books of extracts, he transgresses the rule, so when in your assemblies for worship you touch on ground other than what is common to you as Christians of all denominations, you violate your principles.

I might have appealed to Mr. Kelly at Clifton for the refutation of some of your suggestions; but I pass on to the charge of latitudinarianism, and it is only striking to my mind how evil and systematic habits hinder simple understanding and subjection to God's blessed word and ways. But first as to one or two charges. You charge us with having Baptists, Paedobaptists, Arminians, and Calvinists, Millenarians, Anti-Millenarians, and even Quakers. Well, are there not Paedobaptists, Arminians, Calvinists, Millenarians, Anti-Millenarians in the Establishment, and teaching too? And Quakers have been received there too: also they have been with us, and have been baptized as became them from the circumstances they were placed in. The only difference, then, on the point, is as to the existence of these various views in the minds of these amongst us. They being real Christians, we should undoubtedly feel it wrong to shut them out, and rejoice we can walk together in love. There is only this additional difference, that there is not, through mercy, amongst us a vast body of members who have no faith at all. And I think you would find more unity of mind amongst us than amongst yourselves. Nay, it was your complaint at Clifton, that we were all so made up in one mind that, wherever you met us, you just heard the same testimony from us all; and when you had heard one, you had heard all. Others have made the same complaint. We are thankful the Lord has kept us thus hitherto, and lean on His mercy to be preserved in this unity. As to not being able to baptize, I have only to say you are quite mistaken, and that we do so when the occasion arises. That some are Baptists, so called, and some Paedobaptists amongst us, is very true; but by the Lord's mercy we have felt the unity of Christ's body more important than the unity of judgment on this point; and each person, without any hindrance to charity, acts in this as he believes according to the mind of God. Would you exclude a Baptist from the Lord's table with you, were he disposed to go? We have acted on the principle of this word, "Whereto ye have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing." "If in anything ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal this also unto you." We have found most happy peace and flow of charity in it; we do not pretend to have attained perfect light in all that God reveals.

216 Next, sir, you should have been surely more guarded, on reading chapter 17 of John's Gospel, in talking of "the popular idol, unity." I think, sir, deference to the word of God should have made you attach more importance to it. That the world is imitating it by latitudinarianism I know: such is Satan's guile often, and I am not now denying (for I fully believe) its existence; but the allusion is rather an unfortunate one. Are Churchmen or the "Brethren" engaged in carrying on this latitudinarianism of which you cite Irish national schools as the example? I believe the latitudinarianism you speak of is the principle of infidelity and atheism; but I know that the authorities of the Establishment were the means of its introduction into Ireland. Somehow they were able to exclude near three thousand godly men for a garment in 1662, but unable to hinder the introduction of public latitudinarianism in 1828. Was it the "Brethren" or the public supporters and champions of the Church who announced that the reading of the scriptures in the schools was a vital defect, because it was contrary to the principles of the Roman Catholic religion? I do not introduce these things I trust as recriminations.

217 I have already said that I believe modem latitudinarianism is just atheism and infidelity in its worst and perhaps basest shape; nor am I aware of its existence amongst the "Brethren," but, on the contrary, the strongest testimony I know against its real evil. But I believe the narrow sectarianism of the Church as to rules of forms, and its extreme latitudinarianism in introducing by these forms a mass of unconverted, careless persons - careless unbelievers - within its pale, has given occasion to the existence of this latitudinarianism, and a plea for those who have the worst spirit of it to attack that of which the Establishment bears the name as more conscientious than it. Do you think, sir, an infidel cannot act on the minds of men in charging bigotry where godly men are excluded from Christ's Church for the shape or form of clothes - clean contrary to the apostolic rule? and that a handle is not given such to ridicule the picture of holy pastorship when the sale of their appointments and the education for them as one of the professions are notorious facts, however the advocates of the Establishment may excuse or colour them?

The plausible sentiment that proposes to sink all outward differences amongst Christians, to love as brethren, and to work together for the advancement of the gospel, is latitudinarian in its character, and really means a spirit of indifference towards unsound doctrine, and false views of the Person of Christ. Nothing can be worse in principle; but we are told that the end justifies the means. So have the Catholics said for more than a thousand years. "Good, in the eyes of the Papacy, meant what was good for the church: Evil, whatever was bad for the church." The difference between modern Laodiceanism and ancient Catholicism is small in principle. Neither has Christ as its one, grand, exclusive object.

1882 64 Dear Brother, — I received your note this morning, it being sent after me during absence from home. I am sorry to be obliged to return the stamps you enclosed, having to decline the paper you require me to send you. For however those whom you call "exclusives" may have failed, and however this may be for us, their failure does not in the slightest degree amend the sad position of those with whom you have associated yourself, and whom you justly call "open brethren." If I had to choose between the two, "exclusiveness as it is" and "openness" or "inclusiveness" as you understand it, I by far prefer the former. Satan wants God's people to walk either with a narrow heart in a narrow path, which is sectarianism, or with a broad (that is, a large) heart in a broad way, which is latitudinarianism. Now if I had to choose between these two evils, I should prefer the former; for bad as sectarianism is, it is at least based upon some portion of divine truth. But latitudinarianism is indifference to all divine truth, whilst owning it outwardly; and this is the worst of all.

The Latitudinarian is very "good natured" and honest (negatively); he is a much more agreeable neighbour than the bigot at any time. Occasionally he is a Nothingarian and does not profess to care anything for or against any phase of religion, like Gallio or Meroz; and occasionally he is an Everythingarian — generally an Arian of some sort, whether avowed or not, in these times; and then he can see so much to be said for all sides of a question, that like Chunder Sen he can construct a brand new religion from selected parts of all the others; or still more probably, like Reuben he will sit on the fence with "heart searching" introspection, and leave the others to do the fighting. Why should he fight? He sees with calm and comprehensive sight that Black is not all Black, nor White so very White. Thus he sits impartially until the contending parties decide which theory is by survival the fittest for popular acceptance, when he gets down quietly and joins the victorious party; but he maintains his reputation for sagacity and impartiality by representing their opponents' side of the contention in the role of a "candid friend." He has often a large and capacious intellect and makes an excellent judge to sum up the evidence pro and con, like Francis Bacon: but a bribe or a threat may lead him, as it led Bacon, to pervert judgment. He is not deliberately wicked, for he neither hates nor loves any one strongly enough for that; yet his selfishness and weakness may wreck the best cause and betray his dearest friend, as Bacon's led Essex to the scaffold. He lacks one thing needful; he is heartless, and consequently weak of purpose and afraid to be in a minority: like those lukewarm Laodiceans who, because they were neither cold nor hot, were cast out of the mouth of One Who had stood alone thorn-crowned and ridiculed against the whole world.

But toleration springs from principle; latitudinarianism from policy: and there is as much difference between them as between zeal and bigotry. Bigotry will inflict suffering for a Cause; zeal will endure it. "The bigot's mind is like the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour on it the more it contracts:" but the zealous mind is like a flower, which the light expands and colours. The tolerant man is often zealous; while the latitudinarian is often bigoted. In Christendom latitudinarianism ends, as its name ends, in Arianism. [ A figure used — by a strange coincidence — independently by two eminent writers.]

365 I believe these fundamental principles are deeply needed in this day, for the saint who seeks to walk truly and thoroughly with God. Latitudinarian unity it may be painful and trying to keep aloof from; it has an amiable form in general, is in a measure respectable in the religious world, tries nobody's conscience, and allows of everybody's will. It is the more difficult to be decided about, because it is often connected with a true desire of good, and is associated with amiable nature. And it seems rigid, and narrow, and sectarianism to decline so to walk. But the saint, when he has the light of God, must walk clearly in that. God will vindicate His ways in due time. Love to every saint is a clear duty; walking in their ways is not. And he that gathers not with Christ scatters. There can be but one unity; confederacy, even for good, is not it, even if it have its form. Unity, professed to be of the church of God, while evil exists and is not put away, is a yet more serious matter. It will always be found to be connected with the clerical principle, because that is needed to maintain unity, when the Spirit is not its power, and, in fact, takes its place, guides, rules, governs in its place, under the plea of priesthood, or ministry, owned as a distinct body, a separate institution: it would not hold together without this.

354 Now, unity is a divine doctrine and principle; but, as evil is possible wherever unity is taken by itself so as to be a conclusive authority, wherever evil does enter, the conclusive obligation of unity binds to the evil, because the unity, where the evil is, is not to be broken. Of this we have a flagrant example in Romanism. There the unity of the church is the grand basis of argument; and it has been the ground of keeping the world, we may say, in every sanctioned enormity, and made the name of Christianity its warrant - an authority to bind souls to evil, till the name itself became shameful to the natural conscience of man. The plea of unity may then be, in a measure, the latitudinarianism which flows from the absence of principle; it may be the narrowness of a sect formed on an idea; or, it may be, as taken by itself, the claim to be the church of God, and hence in principle secure as much indifference to evil, as it is the convenience of the body or its rulers to allow, or is in the power of Satan to drag them into. If the name of unity then be so powerful in itself, and in virtue of blessings withal which God Himself has attached to it, it behoves us well to understand what the unity He owns really is. This it is I would propose to inquire into; acknowledging the desire for it to be a good thing, and many of the attempts at it to contain in them elements of good feeling, even when the means may not carry conviction to the judgment as being those of God.

These are solemn questions: the more solemn, because of the spirit of the age in which we live and are called to be faithful witnesses for God. The spirit of the age is to miscall latitudinarianism and indifference by the fair names of charity and liberality. It hardly becomes me, perhaps, to remind brethren of this; and that one of our special dangers in seeking to preserve and promote outward unity, is that of compromising truth and holiness. O how deeply necessary it is to remember, that the "unity" we are exhorted to keep is no carnal or merely outward unity, but "the unity of the Spirit:" a unity of which, He, who is the Holy Spirit and the Spirit of Truth, is both the author and the power: a unity, therefore, which is utterly inconsistent with the sacrifice or denial either of truth or holiness.

We do then receive on the one great truth of Christ's salvation all that through divine grace believing it are converted to God. And we then, having ministry of truth, build them up according to what God has given us. That there is imperfection in the teaching I do not deny, for we are all imperfect. But I do not think, dear sir, if you are acquainted with scripture, and your mind is based on it, you can object on principle to this as unscriptural. I think you would find amongst us the very opposite to latitudinarianism - a strong desire and prayer for and search after unity among the saints of God; and the careful and diligent teaching of the measure of truth we have received. And if you say no good thing can come out of Nazareth, we will count it only prejudice, and say, "Come and see."