William J. Irons

“ If twenty years ago, soon after a few of the clergy had asserted their “claim to hold all Roman doctrine,” [3] a proposal had been made to abolish Subscription to the English Formularies, it would surely have been thought to indicate very grave disloyalty to our Church. And now, when others have asserted the right to unfettered “free-thinking” within her pale, and endeavoured to vindicate that right in our Courts of Law, can we help being struck at the intrepidity of the demand to sweep away at once the sober restraints of orthodoxy to which Churchmen have been so long accustomed? ”

“ But will any relaxation of “Subscription”—will the destruction of the Articles, or the Revision of the Liturgy by “the Association” set up of late, bring back Theological learning, or tempt the “higher minds” into the Church’s ranks? No one can imagine it. A great misfortune has happened to us, and the way to repair it is not easily seen; but it is something to see the evil itself. The Romanizing movement was a great misfortune: we all deplore it, even those who know that it was provoked by the narrow-minded treatment which it received. ”

“ I have moved very freely for many years among my brethren, and I can but say that my experience of them as a body does not in any degree correspond with the representation which Dr. Stanley makes, which I think will surprise both our friends and our enemies. I can do no more, of course, than simply protest [36] against it with all my heart; believing fully that when the Articles and the Prayer-book are interpreted, not with “Chinese” perverseness, but honestly and humanly, they are ordinarily found accordant with reason, with Scripture, and with themselves. ”

“ This is an evil, the existence of which I shall not question—it is indeed too plain, and too alarming to admit of any doubt. But I deny that it has any foundation in the practice of Subscription; which has not been changed, or made more rigid, in our days. I have never known one conscientious, thoughtful young churchman kept from Holy Orders by a shrinking from Subscription. They who have shrunk have been persons who differ from the Church, and acknowledge the fact. ”

“ Surely, said the wise man, “in vain is the net spread in the sight of any bird.” To tell us beforehand that we are to be coaxed into a general movement to get rid of Subscription, and, that being done, we must reckon on the subsequent change of the Prayer-book “by OTHER MEANS,” seems so very like an insult to the understanding of p. 10men of all parties who believe anything, that I can only explain it by calling to mind the proverbial blindness of genius when hotly hastening to its own object, and forgetting how it looks to all around. ”

“ It is trifling to confound the intellectual reception of a doctrine with its saving reception, and it is saying that none but very clever people will be saved. Such confusion is equivalent to a rejection of even the simplest form of Creed. ”

“ If they were not to be merely scattered units, to be attracted in time to the largest bodies near them, they were obliged to find some principle of cohesion among themselves; and they who refuse to allow them to make “articles” or “confessions” ought in charity to suggest some other plan. To have separated from a compact body like the Roman Church and profess nothing positive, was surely an impossible course.—But Dr. Stanley further says, “The excess of Subscription on the continent over-leaped itself and has led to its gradual extinction, or modification.” ”

“ If, indeed, we could look into the mind of the majority of good Christians, p. 34and see the shape which doctrines there take, we should often find the greatest amount of heresy of the intellect co-existing with orthodoxy of heart. A statement thus drawn out at length in a Creed is the Church’s intellectual exposition, as far as it goes, of the Doctrine professed. The million may not know this; but the Church tells them—“If you hold the true doctrine, this is what, consciously or not, you are holding.” The Athanasian Creed is a statement of that truth which dwells in every Christian heart. ”

“ Stanley would not say that no truth in Scripture is “necessary to salvation?” He would not say that no doctrine of any Creed is “necessary to salvation?” But yet he would not say that right intellectual conceptions of any truth, or of any doctrine, are “necessary to salvation?” And as he would own that some faith is necessary, or a “grace of faith” (the “Habitus Fidei” of the Schools) , he must own, therefore, that saving p. 35faith, however unintellectual, is, as I said, orthodox. To “hold the Faith” is one thing; to apprehend its intellectual expression is another. ”

“ As one who, without belonging to any party, has had the happiness of much friendship with all—as a Churchman, I may add, who has kept steadily to the old Prayer-book from very early childhood till now—I have had large opportunities for many years of knowing the heart and mind of my brethren the clergy, ten thousand of whom not long since responded to an appeal which I and others had been invited to make to them ”

“ We know that God’s grace in the soul is always “orthodox;” but “with the heart man believeth unto righteousness;” but the Creed forbids the intellect to misinterpret what the heart has savingly known.—The agreement with the Eastern Church attempted at the Council of Florence illustrates this; for it was evidently on this basis. The Greeks were not told that their forefathers had all perished, but that their expression of the truth which they held was less perfect than the Latin. ”

“ When bishops met together periodically, as they then did, to regulate the affairs of the Church,—and stood in mutual awe of each other’s spiritual powers;—when dismissal from Communion was a chastisement shrunk from, by laity and clergy, with terror,—it might have been easy to do without such Subscriptions as now attempt to guard the orthodoxy p. 21of our people. So again in the Pre-Reformation Church; the organization of the hierarchy, and the necessary submission of the people, might often render Subscriptions more than superfluous—unintelligible. ”

“ Parents and guardians and friends could not desire social and professional neglect—if not worse—for those in whom they were interested. They saw and said, that “there was but little chance for a clever man,” if he had the stigma of high ability or learning. If such a man as Dr. Mill—to whose writings men readily seek, now that the infidel is at our doors—if he died in comparative obscurity and neglect, what could others look for? ”

“ Stanley’s argument requires. Instead of the twenty years and more, which preceded Elizabeth’s 12th year, being years in which the Church of the Reformation adopted laxity as its principle, the whole of the period, from the beginning of the reign of Edward to the year 1571 (with the exception of the brief interval of Mary’s government) , was occupied in a careful effort on the part of the Reformers to tie down both clergy and laity by the strictest body of ecclesiastical law, perhaps, ever attempted to be enacted in the Christian world. ”

“ Stanley on the other side is, indeed, no slight advantage to the cause of those who would now supersede the Prayer-book by “modern thought.” In urging the surrender of all Subscription to our Formularies, he can speak, in his position, with a prestige and power to which I can have no claim. His testimony as to the tone of mind now prevailing in Oxford, or among the younger clergy of the last few years, it is not for me to impeach,—I must leave that to the Bishop of Oxford ”

“ An intelligent Wesleyan was recently urged by a friend of mine to return to the Church, and solemnly replied, “Never, till you have Discipline.” But the attracting of non-conformists to the Church is not what Dr. Stanley proposes to aim at by his plan to abolish Subscriptions. Certainly they have not been attracted to Oxford during the last nine years of non-subscription there.
[28] In other places, it is not the “early” age at which (p. 52) we are “trapped into it” which is complained of, but the maturer time of “Holy Orders” and “Mastership” (pp. 29, 30) —which, then, is the grievance? ”

“ Men of ability will not take Holy Orders.
(3.) There is a “practical evil,” which has of late been greatly pressed on public notice, which Dr. Stanley thus refers to (p. 30) —“Intelligent, thoughtful, highly educated young men, who twenty p. 29or thirty years ago were to be found in every Ordination, are gradually withheld from the service of the Church, and from the profession to which their tastes, their characters, and their gifts, best fit them.” ”

“ Subscription keeps them out, of course. It is meant to do so, if it has any meaning at all. But if we look around us at the state of things in the Church, during the twenty or thirty years to which Dr. Stanley alludes, we shall not find it difficult to ascertain causes which have kept, and will keep, so many intelligent and conscientious minds of the higher order, from entering the ministry of the Church. Young men of ability in the last generation, if designed for Holy Orders, gave themselves to Theological study. ”

“ A late dignitary even expressed “thankfulness” on one occasion at some moderate-looking promotion that had been made in high places, and he was remonstrated with by one who knew the entire ignorance of theology of the clergyman who had just been honoured. “Why, he is wholly ignorant of Christianity!” ”

“ When a great statesman of the last age p. 11told us that our religion was but a “schedule of an Act of Parliament,” we could at least reply that “ex animo” Subscription makes it our own; but to ask us now to take away even this, seems almost to sever all connexion between the Church of England and the moral agency of her Ministers. The Act of 1662, and its “schedule,” the Prayer-book, might be our “standard” till the next session, and might claim as much reverence as any other old Act of Parliament,—but no more. Put the whole proposal, then, of Dr. Stanley, and of Mr. ”

“ I should be sorry, indeed, my Lord, if it could be thought from my deprecating the proposed abolition of Subscription, that I regard the condition of the Church among us as a normal or satisfactory one. But I feel, as thousands do, that whatever changes may lie before us, they should be towards increased organization of our Body; while the present proposal would disorganize us at once, and break away the traditions by which, in an undisciplined age, Providence protected us. This proposal, I am p. ”

“ But the loss of Theology and high intellect is a greater misfortune by far; and this will be yet found, when the dulness of a coming generation has to defend the Bible apart from the Church.
The Athanasian Creed.
(4.) In discussing the “practical evils” of Subscription, I observe that Dr. Stanley occasionally singles p. 32out parts of our “Formularies,” as involving special difficulty, and embarrassing “subscribers” in a more painful way than others. More than once he mentions the Creed of St. ”

“ But to represent this pause as a kind of freedom from “Subscription” enjoyed in earlier and more liberal times, to say that “the Church,” at least, was ignorant of this device, when “Subscription” to p. 14certain “Articles” was the first step which the Convocation and the Universities naturally took, immediately Elizabeth came to the throne, surprises me beyond what I like to express. The “general reader” is entirely at the mercy of so eloquent a writer as Dr. Stanley, and it is not too much to ask that he use his power with a little generosity ”

“ There is no fallacy more glittering, but none more unworthy, illogical, and self-condemning than that of false historical parallel. And I again must ask your Lordship, whether Dr. Stanley’s appeal to the Primitive History has not wholly failed?—I have briefly shown that Constantine was not the originator of Subscriptions to creeds or canons, but that subscribing or professing dogmatic assent was a Christian custom of the earlier ages. It is plain to every one who knows the history, e.g., of a great bishop like St. ”

“ I. “The Church of England, as such, recognises absolutely no Subscriptions.” Such is Dr. Stanley’s proposition (p. 38) . The tests of membership are “incorporated in the Services to the exclusion, as it would seem, of all besides.” It is added (p. 39) —“These other obligations were, in fact, not contemplated at the time of the first compilation of the Prayer-book and Articles, and have grown up as a mere excrescence through the pressure of political and ecclesiastical parties. The p. 13Articles were not subscribed (by anything like general usage) till the 12th year of Elizabeth ”