Anglican Communion

“ The declaration of these loyal children declares that "Christ is really present in the Holy Eucharist, and being present, is of course to be adored."
Now, if the bishops of the Anglican communion have any right to decide in litigated questions, they have spoken with sufficient plainness. The "Catholic school" in England has had a hard road to travel while one after another their favorite positions have been condemned. The last decision of the Privy Council is adverse to the ceremonies of Ritualism, and of course to the doctrines which underlie them. ”

“ The Churches of the Anglican Communion have never set forth any competent guide for the conduct of worship, and by refraining from so doing have left the matter in the hands of those who have to conduct services and provide for the spiritual needs of those over whom they have been given cure of souls. ”

“ Thus the constituent parts of the Anglican communion gradually acquire autonomy: missionary jurisdictions develop into organized dioceses, and dioceses are grouped into provinces with canons of their own. But the most complete autonomy does not involve isolation. The churches are in full communion with one another, and act together in many ways; missionary jurisdictions and dioceses are mapped out by common arrangement, and even transferred if it seems advisable ”

“ With regard to the first question, all that we need to know is what proportion of the Christians are in a position to carry on their own religious life independently of foreign help. In the Anglican Communion that involves the presence of a duly ordained priest: in some societies which deny the necessity of ordination, yet give a position not unlike that of the priest to their ordained men, it would involve the presence of a pastor. Others deny the necessity or advantage of any ordained ministers. ”

“ Paul (if indeed we can with truth consider so great a man wholly uninspired) . But the great Bishop of the South Seas, in the charge from which copious extracts are there given, distinctly recommends the revival of spiritual discipline81 and the censures of the Church upon unrepenting offenders. He refers for authority to apostolic example and precept, and to the discipline rubrics of the Communion Service, and adds the undeniable fact that our Anglican communion is the only branch of the Christian Church where such discipline is wanting. ”

“ On questions of doctrine we find, then, that the convention has done nothing, save that the bishops have asserted, on their own authority, that Christ's commission has been committed to a fallible instrumentality; that communion with the body of Christ is necessary, while no instructions are given as to what and where that body is to be found; that the pope is the great obstacle to catholic unity; that the vicar of our Lord on earth is the Holy Ghost; that the Anglican reformation is good and to be imitated; that there is no presence whatever of Christ in the Holy Eucharist ”

“ Such I conceive to be a statement of the only view an Anglican can consistently take, unless he plants himself upon the common Protestant ground. According to this, it is ridiculous for him to abstain from going to Catholic services, reading Catholic books, and cultivating the acquaintance of Catholic clergymen and lay-people. The pretence of deposing or degrading clergymen, because they pass to the communion of Rome, is an absurd and impotent attempt at retaliation. ”

“ There is nothing sacramental in Anglican orders, and there never was, since England broke away from the Church, and, consistently enough, orders were expunged from the Protestant catalogue of sacraments in the very infancy of the Reformation. They still keep up a semblance of orders: they have what they call the diaconate, the priesthood, and the consecration of bishops. A deacon is ordained much in the same way as our own deacons, and he can perform all the duties of the parish, with the exception of the Communion Service. ”

“ The clergy naturally are most positive in the assertion that their orders are valid; as the nature and the necessity of jurisdiction are alike unknown to the ordinary Anglican mind, the matter seems pretty clear. The laity in the Anglican body are not in any very definite manner bound by the Prayer-book or by any of the authorized documents of that body; there is nothing anomalous in the idea of Anglican lay people, especially women, going to confession without even asking themselves whether the practice is in accordance with the mind of the communion to which they belong. ”

“ It has, we may trust, kept many from ever falling into grievous sin; and while we are of course unable to admit the validity of Anglican orders, and consequently of sacraments dependent on such orders, we rejoice to think that what the devout soul believes to be a sacramental communion may prove a spiritual communion and be a means of grace and blessing. ”

“ Of course no Catholic supposes Anglican clergymen to have true orders. Confession in the English communion is simply a conversation between two lay people on some of the most important subjects that can occupy the thoughts of human beings. There may be on either side sincerity, piety, and earnestness, but sacramental grace there is not. Relations so close between two souls are certainly not without peril ”

“ I believe that Christ is especially anxious to teach us the truth to-day after all these centuries of strife, and I am convinced that so far as the Anglican Church is concerned that there is a wonderful measure of agreement between all her members concerning the doctrine of the Holy Communion when they heed the advice of our great theologian, the judicious Hooker, and "the more give themselves to meditate with silence what we have by the Sacrament and less to dispute of the manner how." ”

“ Nonconformist services are less plain; some go from their ranks because they dislike the “bald” worship in the chapel, and prefer the more elaborate forms of the Anglican Church, which in its turn is for the same reason left by others who find their tastes gratified by the complete thing, as it is to be enjoyed full blown in the Roman Catholic communion. ”

“ It was founded in 1844 in opposition to the Tractarian movement, and embodies the distinctively evangelical elements of the Reformation. It preserves and maintains to the letter all that is Protestant and evangelical in the liturgy and services of the Anglican church, while its free constitution and revised formularies meet the needs of members of that communion who resent sacerdotal and ritualistic tendencies. ”

“ And this is a sufficient answer to what you have written.' Perhaps the result might not have been very different, even if the overtures in question had been backed by the authority of the whole Anglican Church—a communion which at this period was universally acknowledged as the leader of Protestant Christendom. And even if there were less immutability in Eastern counsels, Bishop Campbell and his coadjutors could scarcely have been sanguine in hoping for any other issue. Truth and right, as they remarked in a letter to the Czar, do not depend on numbers ”

“ All these have something in common with the Roman, Greek, and Anglican communions, and even profess with them to believe the Apostles' and Nicene creeds. The Methodists have bishops, priests or elders, and deacons, as the Anglicans, and adopt the same articles of faith. The churches named have presbyters, and so have Presbyterians, the continental Reformed, and the Lutheran churches; some of the Lutheran churches even have bishops. There is something in common between these and the churches the author claims to be catholic. ”

“ We can see, in the case of Anglicans believing in nearly all Catholic doctrine so far as even to acknowledge the primacy of the pope and desire a corporate reunion with the Catholic Church, that, so long as they believe in the validity of their own orders and other sacraments, it is very hard for them to realize that they are not in the communion of the true church. They generally find their ground of security give way under their feet by their loss of confidence in the validity of their ordinations. ”

“ Deceive not yourselves, then, my brethren; there is a way of receiving Jesus Christ, by which his presence is rendered useless to us; and would to God, that, in thus receiving him, we deprived ourselves only of those favours which follow a holy communion! Ah! my brethren, unless the communion gives birth to Jesus Christ in our hearts, it brings death to him there; if it does not render us participators of his Spirit and of his grace, it is the sentence of our condemnation: if it be not a fruit of life to our soul, it is a fruit of death. ”

“ We are not to argue with them which of us is nearer the customs of the New Testament; that is not to the point. Wherever we see the Spirit of Christ, there we are to recognize fellow churchmen in the one Church of God. We do not wish uniformity, but variety in unity; for only a Church with a most varied ministry can bring the life of God to the endlessly diverse temperaments of men and women. We are not seeking for the maximum common denominator, and insisting that every communion shall give up all its distinctive doctrines, ritual, customs and activities. ”

“ But as a man’s parents and forefathers may have been members of a communion, a continuance in which would be manifestly contrary to the word of God (as, for instance, if a man were born of Popish or Socinian parents;) I therefore say, that “I maintain communion with the Church of England, not MERELY because my parents and forefathers were members of her community.” ”

“ At present I fear, as far as I can analyze my own convictions, I consider the Roman Catholic Communion to be the Church of the Apostles, and that what grace is among us (which, through God's mercy, is not little) is extraordinary, and from the overflowings of His dispensation. I am very far more sure that England is in schism, than that the Roman additions to the Primitive Creed may not be developments, arising out of a keen and vivid realizing of the Divine Depositum of Faith. ”

“ According to which rule, although the Priest have all things ready, and desires to consecrate and receive the Holy Sacrament himself, yet he must not do it, unless he have such a number to communicate with him, that it may be properly a Communion. But, as it is there ordered, "Upon the Sundays and other Holydays (if there be no Communion) shall be said all that is appointed at the Communion until the end of the general prayer (for the good estate of the Catholic Church of Christ) ;" where we may observe, that the Church, as I have shewn, appoints the Sacrament to be administered every day. ”

“ Had I been born a Catholic, I should have been an ardent champion of my Church. But how can I approve of the conversion of a person in your position? Do you not reflect that your husband is an officer of the Calvinist communion?"
"But it is the very prosaic nature of this communion which offends me. For in what a dull manner do our elders and deacons perform their sacred functions! Prayer, sermon, hymns—everything is with them a mere matter of enforced routine. How can they inspire others who have not themselves the gift of grace? ”

“ And if it is so, they say, then our communion is the Church of Christ; for the Holy Spirit does not work the remission of sins except in the Church. And if our communion is the Church of Christ, then your communion is not the Church of Christ. For that is one, wherever it is, of which it is said, "My dove is but one; she is the only one of her mother;" [37] nor can there be just so many churches as there are schisms. But if we should say that sins are not there remitted, then, say they, there is no true baptism there ”

“ Such of our churches as have already, week by week, a fairly attended Celebration, to which all the faithful are heartily invited and urged to come,—such churches exhibit [35] a spectacle of really Apostolical Eucharistic Service, such as the whole world beside cannot produce. Neither in East or West, but in the English Church only, is weekly Communion, as the bounden duty of all Christians, so much as dreamt of; so utterly has the apostolic model, throughout Christendom, faded from the memory of the Church of God. ”

“ I know well that in comparatively late times one school of thought in the English Church have endeavoured to get back to the old Catholic doctrine of the Sacrifice of the Mass. Some have been so dissatisfied with the formula of the Communion in the Book of Common Prayer that they have added to it and have even in some cases made use of our ancient Canon from the Latin missal. ”

“ How it gives new energy to the soul, destroys the power of concupiscence, banishes, or at least weakens, temptation, always giving us the grace to hold our own against the world, the flesh, and the devil. And there are Catholics who refuse to make this Communion once a year!
But there is one thing that ought to be said here. A Catholic ought never to consider as useless, or as almost useless, any one of the sacraments. This too many do as regards confession. They underrate it. They think, therefore, it is no good unless they receive Communion every time they go to confession. ”

“ Since the apostle says that we ought not to be partakers with the sins of other men, [537] what else does he do but make himself partaker with the sins of other men, who holds communion with heretics without the baptism of the Church? And therefore I pronounce my judgment that heretics should be baptized, that they may receive remission of their sins, and so communion be allowed to them. ”