Alexander James Beresford Beresford Hope

“ I lament and I resent the wrongs and the misfortunes of the Irish Church, and I feel how natural it is that, while she is under the influence of such feelings, the community, acting by its Synods, might be inclined to courses of action from which it would shrink in more peaceful and prosperous times. ”

“ All public movements have a tendency—right, within due limits—towards compromise; and it is, therefore, not impossible that in face of the difficulties inherent in any scheme of absolute alteration of the Formularies, the Committee may alike endeavour to gratify the party which values identity with England, and that which advocates change with a single eye to the supposed requirements of Ireland, by leaving the letter of the Liturgy and Formularies as it stands, and yet supplementing that letter with a body of explanatory and modifying glosses in the form of rubrics, notes, or canons. ”

“ As one equal to another, the English invites the Irish Church at this crisis to rely, not upon her sister's patronage, but upon her sympathy, and not to multiply her own difficulties by assuming burdens which England may not feel herself competent to take part in bearing. ”

“ As the Prayer Book and Articles stand, each section has a colourable pretext for claiming the support of the entire body while it sustains, as a whole, that Church whether in England or Ireland, with the tacit but recognised reservation—the more cheerfully acknowledged because the less formally proclaimed—that it finds the apology for its own position within the tolerant pages of those cautious and comprehensive formularies. ”

“ I do appeal to the moral strength which will be given to the Irish Church, in its future conflict, by its continuing in harmony with the general religious tone of the majority of educated and religious-minded Churchmen in England, especially of that landed class, with whom in particular the lay leaders of Irish Church opinion are likely to come in contact. The Churchmanship of this class is undoubtedly one of moderation. Their type of worship is a system of decorous solemnity. They are, as a body, ready for improvement, and quick to appreciate it when calmly presented ”

“ After all, the position of any Church, in a country where open toleration exists as it does in England, must be reviewed by the light of its relations to the whole body public, and not exclusively by that of the internal action of its own community. ”

“ It may, however, be pleaded that it is, in point of fact, the desire of some at least of those who promoted the Committee to disturb at all hazards the status in quo of the High Church section, and not merely to check specific practices for which that section as a whole cannot be held as in any way responsible. It may be argued that the mischiefs produced by those practices are so great that nothing short of sharp and strong material guarantees covering a wider ground than that of the absolute and literal grievance would be effective. ”

“ The members of the Irish Church have undoubtedly the right to claim for themselves that intimate knowledge of their own position and requirements which renders them in the last resort—now that their political connection with the Established Church of England has been rent—sole judges of the wisdom, not less than of the lawfulness of their own proceedings, as far as they affect the internal constitution of their community. ”

“ As long as there is hereditary identity of formulary between the two Churches, however differently those formularies may be worked, according to the diversities of local circumstance, the Church in Ireland can appeal to that of England, the Church of England to that of Ireland, without arrière pensée or explanatory definition. Each body relies upon its antecedently recognised position, and their intercourse is the outpouring of confidential kinship, not the regulated correspondence of diplomatic amity. ”

“ If, on the contrary, it were maintained that these parasitical additions, however valuable within their own limits, were not to be reckoned as possessing an authority equivalent to that of the original documents, the door will be opened to an amount of misunderstanding and of bewilderment—if not, possibly, of equivocation — which would require the gifts of a Sanchez or an Escobar, rather than of any straightforward English or Irish clergyman to comprehend and harmonise. ”

“ Speaking for both branches of the United Church, I believe that its watchwords are moderation and toleration; and that, in proportion as each community is moderate and tolerant, she speaks the mind of her Divine Head. Among the guarantees of that moderation and that toleration, I hold, as I have already indicated, that the existing formularies—taken altogether and as a traditionary body of documents—hold a principal place ”

“ If, on the other hand, the Broad Church come out victors, the Low Church would, in course of time, find itself drawn into an understanding, confessed or acknowledged, with its older antagonist in favour of the principle of specific doctrine, which would bode no good to a latitudinised Irish Church. ”

“ While the English and the Irish Prayer Books remain the same, they need no deeper reason for sympathising with and aiding the Irish Church. Once introduce a difference, and you have thrown upon them to seek why they should continue to sympathise, and upon the Irish Church to meet that search with adequate arguments.
As a member of the Church of England, I have always in England raised my voice in favour of moderate opinions, and opened my ears to tolerant counsels. ”

“ Bishop White, of Pennsylvania, and his companions received their episcopal orders at Lambeth, and returned imbued with the mild and courtly politeness of the Established Church of George III. The divines who undertook for the American States the revision of the Prayer Book with, in all probability, the intention, above all things, of procuring its acceptance on the plea that it was not the Prayer book of then hated England, represented the differing schools of Seabury and White. ”

“ These men justify their eccentricities by appeals to a higher law, of which they have made themselves interpreters and judges. They do not pretend to look into the Liturgy and Formularies for the warrant of their proceedings. They assert that this or that thing is "Catholic," and they accordingly do or say this or that thing because their own higher law decrees its catholicity. Short, therefore, of turning these gentlemen out of the Church, you will not touch them by any changes in the Prayer Book. ”

“ It follows from this truth that in order fully to judge of the expediency of a severe handling of that ultra section, we cannot afford to lose sight of them even after they may have been compelled to leave the Church. It is quite conceivable that they might succeed as an independent sect in winning proselytes from the residuary body, who would otherwise have been retained and kept in order, by that surest antagonism to excess which is offered by the constant example and gentle influence of corporate moderation. ”

“ What you will do, however, is that, supposing you succeed in turning them out of the Church, you will have effected your object, by a permutation of the Prayer Book, so thorough and so dogmatic, as to import distress and perplexity into the minds and consciences of moderate High Churchmen, whose good and wholesome labours for the common cause rest upon their acceptance of the actual formularies. ”

“ The Church of England must either be tolerant or intolerant. If intolerant it must find some Popedom either personal or in commission, or some substitute for an Œcumenical Council not liable to interruption by the regiments of any neighbouring state. If it is to continue tolerant without becoming indifferentist and definite without shrivelling into bigotry, it cannot do better under existing circumstances than go on with the actual formularies ”

“ It is manifest that the Irish Church cannot draw a precedent for altering that which it already holds in common with England, from the history of the gradual drawing together of the originally independent Episcopal Churches of England and of Scotland, particularly when it recollects, till a very late date, the ministers of the former could not by Act of Parliament lend their pulpits to those of the latter ”

“ I trust, therefore, that my brother Churchmen of Ireland will take in the same good part, as that in which they are offered, some friendly considerations upon the appointment, by the late Church Convention in Ireland, of the Committee which has been instructed "to consider whether, without making any such alterations in the Liturgy or Formularies of our Church as would involve or imply a change in her doctrines, any measure can be suggested calculated to check the introduction and spread of novel doctrines and practices opposed to the principles of our Reformed Church ”

“ All these sections do exist in the Irish Church, and one or two of them would probably find its or their position the weaker from the proposed alterations in the Prayer Book. The first and obvious policy of the weakened party would be an alliance offensive and defensive with their English sympathisers. On the other hand, that section in England which agreed with the victorious school in Ireland would of course use it as a convenient instrument by which to push its personal advantage in England, without any overwhelming care for the result to Ireland and its church population. ”

“ Anything which paralyses that party gives additional opportunities to the ultra wing to make conquests, which will not tell the less effectively upon the opposite section, or—to speak more correctly—upon the whole community, because they might be won by those who had become outsiders, in favour of some body no longer within the formal circle of the Church. ”

“ It will be more satisfactory and more respectful to test the Committee in the terms of its own appointment, as those who may either have to serve upon it, or to probe its conclusions, will have themselves to do. ”

“ Then all their labour will have been in vain—their Report, because it will have failed of an unanimous, or at least of a preponderating acceptance, will have been virtually rejected before it was put to the vote, and matters will be left just where they are at present, with the difference of much time lost and much ill-blood bred. ”