What is the Church of England?

— Now, the grand and characteristic feature of the Church of England (so called) is, that the sovereign of the country is ex officio its supreme governor or head. This makes the Anglican system to be the church of the country. Where is the warrant for it in Scripture? They may refer to Saul doing this — David, Solomon, Hezekiah, or Josiah, doing that. But what is all this to the purpose? They were kings of Israel, whose polity, civil and religious, was divinely ordered as no other nation was, is, or shall be. Our inquiry has to do with the Church of God, on which the New Testament casts as distinct a light as the Old Testament does on Israel. According to the Acts and Epistles, Henry the Eighth could not have been received as a member of God's Church, yet he took the place of head in the Church of England. In the Church of God, our sovereign lady the Queen could not rule in the humblest way; in the Church of England she has the chief power. The conduct of bishops is amenable to her judgment as a last resort. Even upon the grave question, whether a given doctrine, held or rejected, unfits a man for induction, she decides through a few lawyers, who form the judicial body of the Privy Council; for, all estates, ecclesiastical or civil, are under her government, as the chief. Such is the doctrine of Art. XXXVII. Is it scriptural or unscriptural? May we not add, (remembering 1 Tim. 2:11). Is it not anti-scriptural? If men say, Times are changed; the answer is, Alas! they are, but God's Word is unchanged and unchangeable. It would be more candid to confess that the institution is unsustainable by Scripture, in the fundamental point of the royal supremacy in ecclesiastical matters — an innovation never heard of before the Reformation.

But are the objections to the system merely those of weak consciences? We admit the palm of strong consciences belongs entirely to the clergy of the Established body. But there are grounds of objection, which might strike an indifferent observer of a Christian spirit, and, without evil weakness of conscience, may be accounted objects of the Lord's judgment. The first great objection I would urge against the Church of England is that (instead of being in any sort the gathering of the children of God upon the foundation of a heavenly calling, sitting in spirit in heavenly places in Christ Jesus; being filled with His Spirit; and by the supply of His spirit manifesting the life of Christ, and the power of His grace and presence, in the unity of His sanctified members) it is essentially, as the Church of England, the opposite of all this: and that is, the union of the Church and the world. This makes it the Church of England: for that is the Church, not which God owns, but which the world owns, and of that world Satan is the prince; and the consequence is that if men be all that God owns but not what the world owns, they are accounted schismatics and evil doers, not because they separate from Christians, but from the world presumptuously calling itself the Church, and the Spirit of God and the path of Christ is blasphemed. The Church of England is not the Church of God; but the merging of disciples - of the Church in its members, in a great worldly system. It is that peculiar sin, which pollutes, nullifies and renders void the last great witness of the holiness of the Lord, previous to the coming glory: and therefore along with other similar bodies, constitutes the great final sin of the Church, the substitution of the power of the world for the support of the Church, in lieu of the power, presence and Spirit of God, the consequent necessary desecration of the Church, the grieving of the Spirit of God, making the Church of God the sport of its enemies, and causing the weak sheep of Christ, whom the presence of the Spirit in the grace of the Lord alone could comfort and feed, to be scattered to the winds and to wander on every mountain.

145 The objection of the saints to the Church of England is, that it is the union of the Church and the world; this is what constitutes it the Church of England. The necessary consequence of union with the world is grieving, resisting, and denying the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God cannot bear with the world, and the world cannot bear the Spirit of God, cannot receive it, for it seeth it not, neither knoweth. The Spirit of God may be in individuals in the Church of England, because in fact it is no Church at all; and, so far as they act from the individual indwelling of the Spirit, they may be blessed, and may they be abundantly so! But the system is nothing else (it may sustain the flesh and so be not thought to be so) but a hindrance to them and every one else in whom the Spirit dwells, so far as it constitutes the Church of England. It is a system which the world has prescribed to prevent hurting the feelings of the world, and disallowing all that would, and must do so while on regular terms of alliance with it. Oh! it is a great sin. Hence, wherever the Spirit of God acts, it is discountenanced, or if this be feared from its power, attempted to be confined to the channel of entire dependence on the world. Its energies thus cramped and crippled within the bounds of the system the next consequence is that, when men are not tied up in the system, they do not yield to this effort to connect them with the world and receive its sanction, and they still continue to work, and though blessed and labouring hard in the Lord's cause by the strength and help of the Spirit of God, they are counted separatists and dividers of the Church. Then Satan raises up some scheme of his own, perhaps of active labour with pretence of the word, and not connected with the Church nominally, and those who have been working simply, as Christians not connected with it, are identified with this by the jealousy of those who are, and every pains taken to discredit them, and thus (by virtue of the system of the Church of England) the Spirit of God is hindered, polluted, and mixed with the world; crippled on one side, discredited and dishonoured on the other, and the sole cause and doer of all this is the Church of England. Satan gains his point and laughs at them doing his work. It is impossible that those who are united with the world can love the unhindered working of the Spirit of God.

146 The editor of the Christian Journal has recently united himself to the worldly part of the Church in hopes of doing more good, or of being sustained by them, and hence these articles; for I do not doubt, nor ought I, that his original purpose was to do the Lord's work. Union with the world, the grand distinctive sin and the power of apostasy in the Church, and that which is identified with it, the blaspheming and denying the Spirit of God, and refusing the word as the simple guide, is that which we object to in the Church of England: and let it leave this, all difficulty will cease. Dissenters will quarrel little, I suspect, about episcopacy, and the separatists will be forgotten, for all the saints will be separatists from the world; but while the nominal Church is in it, it may be persuaded that there will be separatists from it. It however is the necessary cause of the division, and this must be while the Spirit of God is grieved and the character of Christ lost by its worldliness.

And here we must note what is a great fallacy in the notion which the church of England desires to give respecting her own constitution. It carries a falsehood on the face of it. we are referred to the articles, or canons, and prayer-book for her constitution and order; but she has not said a word there about her constitution and order, or what she has said is false. the constitution and order of the church of England and Ireland is, that the king and his ministers, or other analogous persons, appoint to all the pastoral offices in the country. where is this stated in these fair-spoken documents? Would churchmen who hold fast by these documents state and avow this, that laymen, it may be ungodly men, should appoint to all the pastoral offices in the country? Is this what they mean to plead as order - church order? Yet church order it is. they state, indeed, that they only ascribe to their princes to rule with the civil sword all the estates of the realm, but they ascribe a great deal more. This was a most godly ascription; but if they have only ascribed this, their princes have ascribed a great deal more to themselves (and they have acquiesced in it, though they have not put it in the book - though it constitutes the special difference of the system, and makes it the church, or, as some may say, not the church of England), and that is, that these individuals, who might be in excommunication, appoint nearly all the pastors in the country. I would ask if there is any order in all this? We have had an eminent instance of this system in principle and practice, when, with one fell swoop, a minister, and not the king at all, but a House of commons (and who are they in the church? struck off ten or twelve of the bishops of a country: that is, he not only is the appointer of the persons, but orders the whole internal arrangement of their superintendence, saying how much is a proper extent of episcopal care, and who shall exercise it. But the great point which strikes at the root of all the church order, and of which the documents state nothing and therefore are a false witness for the church, is, that the pastoral appointments have no connection at all with the church. The succession is from the crown, from the world and its power, not from God at all; so that the great distinctive difference of the church of England would not be found on the face of her own account of herself at all. But that distinctive difference destroys the principle of a church.

For a denominational body there is no room in the scriptural account of the Church or assembly, unless it be "I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas," I of Luther, I of John Knox or Calvin. Churches are historic or ancestral (that is, not of God or scriptural). There is a great body which teaches beyond this - that of Rome, the abiding witness of the corruption and ruin of the Church or house of God placed in responsibility on earth, keeping its name and form, but in the hands of Satan and the seat of his power. The Church of England so called is not so distinctively historic. It seemed about to be so in the reign of Edward VI, but in Elizabeth's she, partly from political motives, partly from education and character, sufficiently patched it back again into Romanism to break it up now into violent parties, one clinging to the whore of Babylon, the other to what truth has survived in it, and to a large mass, by its practical incapacity to govern itself or anyone else, opening the door to latitudinarian infidelity, torturing people's hearts by vacillation between ecclesiastical millinery and adoration of the Eucharist on one side, and Colenso on the other. Thank God, there is the immutable faithfulness of Christ to trust to. He will surely have the Church to present to Himself, and we can count upon His unfailing grace now by the way. An ancestral church, with mutual improvement societies maintaining its doctrine and polity by an esprit de corps, is not the Church of God formed and maintained by the Holy Ghost and founded on the work of Christ: for him who looks for the Church of God and bows to the word it is self-condemned.

Attainment in knowledge they know little about only that if a man think he knows anything, he knows nothing, yet, as he ought to know it. But they count a good conscience a thing for a Christian to keep, and they have been accustomed to apply the passage in Philippians to humbleness of mind as to knowledge, and not, as the editor of the Christian Journal has done, to a question of continuance in what they account the greatest moral evil under the sun; a system calling itself a church, but really "inconsistent with the progress of the gospel," the continuance of the Church in the world grieving the Spirit of God. If the editor does not apply his quotations to this, he is talking beside the question. His "separating brethren" do not separate because of attainment in knowledge, but because the light has broken in upon their souls, that the system he belongs to is a system of ungodliness - to use other words, if he please, though very inadequate words, of "gross corruptions." I say inadequate words, because corruption implies the spoiling of something good: and the Church of England was never something good, but a modification of popery, brought about under Providence by Henry VIII, and good men who held justifying truths for their own souls, and who got rid of as much of popery as the sovereign of the day allowed them.

188 I said to you very plainly that your question assumed that the Establishment was the, or a, church, which I did not admit. Now this is a very plain ground. It is to me precisely the ground of importance; and a plain truth which, when once apprehended, frees the conscience of many an anxious person. The position in which you desired to place me is also evident from the expression, you will take up "my aspersions of the Church of England." I have no pleasure in casting any aspersions on it: to free my own and others' conscience from all that may be or tend to evil, I do desire. Further, sir, I have to admit that the manifested progress of Popery, of which the system of the Church of England is the instrument, renders me less jealous and less anxious to avoid the plain expression of what one may feel painfully, and yet, from ten thousand associations, be unwilling to declare, lest some rude Edomite might suppose for a moment one felt with them. My mind has long admitted its tendency, and I have acted on it. The signs of it are too publicly apparent not to call forth at least some additional warning voice. If mine be so very feeble and despised, as I am sure it is, may the Lord give it truth and affection, and therefore His own force. The Oxford Tracts and their prevalence cannot but have drawn your attention, as they have of Bishops and even newspapers; and recently we have had a very remarkable sign of the times - the highest ecclesiastical authority in the country pronouncing a definite judgment that prayers for the dead are not inconsistent with the doctrines of the Church of England. You may say this is not right: her godly ministers protest against it. Be it so. They cannot help it; and if they say, We declare it is not right, then is the judgment of God on them, because they will not plainly act on and abide by what is right, and renounce what is wrong. What is the resource from the evil proposed by the Record? - An appeal to the Privy Council! What a condition for the Church of God to be placed in, that, when a heresy comes in and is sanctioned, its appeal is to the Privy Council to get rid of it! But I allude to this merely as a sign; and whether the church exculpate herself or not, a sign it is to them that have eyes to see.

189 I believe, dear sir, this, that at the time of the Reformation two great elements entered into the composition of the Church of England, as it is called: one, the power of the Spirit of God in the preached word, which was directed against the Church of England (or of Rome in England then subsisting) and which was carried on by a system of irregularities - Latimer, Bernard Gilpin, and a host of others, many whose names are better known in heaven than on earth, preaching and teaching all about the country, without regard to parish or anything - but which was the power of light against the power of darkness, and that was blest. The other element was partly through the fears of churchmen, and mainly through the interference of the Crown and secular power - a system in which, in order to maintain unity in the whole country, and that even to conciliate Roman Catholics for political purposes under Queen Elizabeth, a vast mass of association with Roman Catholic forms and the value of ordinances was preserved and asserted, by which a connection with the great apostasy was kept up; which, although the power of truth and the providence of God may have a long while hindered its effect, is now beginning distinctly and publicly to show itself, and will, I have no doubt - woe is me that I should have to say it - result in this once comparatively happy country being immersed in and given up to darkness and opposition to God. Can you suppose, sir, that this gives me satisfaction or pleasure in saying it? The Lord knows who grieves over it most - those who sanction the system that leads to it, or such as in sorrow of heart have gone out without the camp, though bearing His reproach, and in word and work become a witness, however feeble.

Let us distinguish things that differ. The English Establishment, in spite of many and grave drawbacks, had a holy object in its rise, turning its back as it did on an abominable and ever swelling imposture. Though much hindered, especially by the king, in its work of clearing itself from many inveterate superstitions, it honestly set its face against what was known to be evil. But it retrograded afterward, until its ritualistic observances being made a test forced out many pious nonconformists, whose origin thus was morally respectable and godly. For it was no mean struggle in those days to keep a good conscience, and to stand opposed to those who were dragging them down into formalism. We need not speak of the Wesley and Whitfield movement, which was in main missionary, not ecclesiastical. We know later on, how powerfully God wrought in awakening His children fifty years ago to a sense of the departure that had taken place from the original ground of keeping the unity of the Spirit. In such days it was no small thing to recognise that there is such a reality on earth as the presence of the Holy Ghost, and consequently the body of Christ. Hence, if members of that body, it is our inalienable duty to keep that unity in its true character, whilst subject to the conditions which the Lord has laid down in His word, and to none other. The Spirit has created that unity, a unity which takes in all members of Christ's body, excepting those whom discipline according to the word requires us to reject.

And first allow me to say that you confound the question of the establishment of the Church with its constitution. The establishment of, that is, in other words, the receiving the State: into the Church, with the interference naturally allowed to the State in certain ecclesiastical arrangements, has, I admit, through the unwatchfulness of the Church, led to many evils; just as the accession of men of rank and fortune creeping into your little community might operate unfavourably upon it, and hinder its efficiency for good. But establishment is not the essence of the Church; its truth and apostolicity, as it came not from the State, nor is maintained by it, so neither can it be taken away by the State. Should the State, that is, the Queen and her executives, tomorrow forsake the Church of England, and adopt one of the sects of the day, suppose yours, making the profession, etc., you require - and I see not how you could decline this union - the Church of England would not cease to be the Church of God. Her endowments might be rapaciously seized on, her buildings for worship alienated from her use, the different orders of her ministers proscribed, her members reduced to meet in a "little upper chamber," but still might she, and I trust would she, be God's chosen witness in the land: unestablished she might be, but not unchurched. Parliament, with its vaunted omnipotence, could not reach to this. You may perhaps take an exception to this assertion, from the fact to which you allude of ten bishoprics in Ireland having been extinguished by Parliament; but, I maintain, this could not have been done had the Church herself been faithful, and for her disloyalty to her glorious Head in this matter much chastening has fallen, and (I am persuaded) will fall on her. Her language to the State, when this aggression was threatened, ought to have been what many, though not alas! the majority of her members, felt "You may confiscate our properties, though it is personal robbery; you may grasp our diocesan and parochial revenues throughout the country, though it is sacrilege; but you must not dare to lay your hands on the ark, or spiritual functions: as the Church of God, we shall, despite of all pains and penalties, maintain the succession of our ministers." Such, I say, should have been the language of the Church on the occasion in question, followed up, if necessary, by the election of bishops to the condemned sees as they fell vacant. Her sin has been that she submitted to the usurpation of the State, in not keeping up the succession of her chief pastors; yea, that she did not exercise discipline in excommunicating the perpetrators* of so presumptuous an act, even though the highest personage in the realm might have become thereby involved.

The Church of England holds within its communion two sections with very decided views—the Evangelicals and the Anglo-Catholics. The former stress conversion, believe in the inspiration of the Scriptures, and are sound on the fundamental doctrines of the Christian Faith. They are seriously alarmed at the prospect of the Composite Prayer Book being authorized by Parliament and by the King, as Head of the Church of England. Many are prepared, to our knowledge, to sever their connection with the Church of England if such a calamity come to pass. To many it will entail great anguish of heart, to others the surrender of stipend and emoluments. All honour to such faithful men and women.