Anglican

“ CHAPTER I. HOW I FOUND MYSELF IN THE CATACOMBS.
I am an Anglican of the Anglicans, I mean that I am τετράγωνος a Perfect Man, with four angles impinging upon my neighbours and producing among them many a sore. Whithersoever I go, into whatsoever society, I take my angles with me. They do much damage, but they establish the principle of Anglicanism. ”

“ Even without his cassock, I imagine, you would have divined him for a clergyman—he bore the clerical impress, that odd indefinable air of clericism which everyone recognises, though it might not be altogether easy to tell just where or from what it takes its origin. In the garb of an Anglican—there being nothing, at first blush, necessarily Italian, necessarily un-English, in his face—he would have struck you, I think, as a pleasant, shrewd old parson of the scholarly—earnest type, mildly donnish, with a fondness for gentle mirth. ”

“ Now, for three hundred years the Anglican clergy have been trained, ordained, and bound by subscriptions to deny not only many Christian truths, but the divine authority of the the living Church of every age. The barrier against infidelity is the divine voice which generates faith. ”

“ We recognise fully and cordially rejoice in the progress of belief which the thinkers and writers of the Anglican Church have practically secured, in spite of their bonds. There is no little truth, to our shame be it spoken, in the boast which is often on their lips, that the progress of theology in our generation is due far more largely to the labours of Anglican than of Nonconformist divines. ”

“ In any exhaustive history of the English people and the Anglican Church in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, it would be necessary to bring to the front every incident and detail bearing upon the relations of the Church and the people, to study every indication of popular enthusiasm or prelatical tyranny, and to develop anew every fading feature of a deeply interesting picture. ”

“ An Anglican church,—nationally independent, without giving up its connexion with the reformed churches of the continent, and reformed, without however letting fall the ancient forms of episcopacy,—in accordance with the ideal, as it was originally understood, was at length, after a hard schooling of trials, struggles, and disasters, really set on foot. ”

“ It is not unjust to resent the appearance of the cultivated and sensitive Anglican, highly bred and graceful, who is sure to turn out hard and hollow-hearted, or the shabby, trotting, tobacco-scented Roman Catholic priest, who is going to emerge at a crisis as a man of inspired dignity and solemnity. ”

“ The necessity for such a phrase as “Anglican Communion,” first used in the 19th century, marked at once the immense development of the Anglican Church in modern times and the change which has taken place in the traditional conceptions of its character and sphere. The Church of England itself is the subject of a separate article (see England, Church of) ; and it is not without significance that for more than two centuries after the Reformation the history of Anglicanism is practically confined to its developments within the limits of the British Isles. ”

“ Even to the conscientious Anglican himself, though he regards the members of other bodies as in schism, Christian fellowship with individuals in those other bodies is still possible; and certainly those who reject the Anglican view of the ministry can regard the Anglican Church as a genuine and very noble member in the body of Christ. ”

“ I can say, with a personal and perfect knowledge, that no other feeling has ever arisen in His Eminence's mind, in contemplating the troubles of the Anglican Church, than a sincere desire that God may use these things to open the eyes of men to see the untenableness of their positions; coupled with a very sincere sorrow at the havoc which the advance of unbelief is making among the truths which yet linger in the Church of England. ”

“ The Anglican church is marked by the grace and good sense of its forms, by the manly grace of its clergy. The gospel it preaches, is, `By taste are ye saved.' It keeps the old structures in repair, spends a world of money in music and building ”

“ It is not surprising that with so many differing shades of opinion within the bosom of the Anglican Church it should, in the earlier half of the century, have lost its grip upon not only the people at large, but upon many of its higher intellects. ”

“ The action of the university, both in what is taught, and in the spirit of the place, is directed more on producing an English gentleman, than a saint or a psychologist. It ripens a bishop, and extrudes a philosopher. I do not know that there is more cabalism in the Anglican, than in other churches, but the Anglican clergy are identified with the aristocracy. ”

“ From those various causes a High Church spirit is showing itself far beyond both sections of the clergy who have identified themselves with Anglican movements, and, in fact, is more or less affecting all parties. ”

“ His literary abilities appear in the bestknown of his works, ‘The Question of Anglican Ordinations discussed,’ 1873. This controversial treatise by an erudite member of the Roman church, with a valuable appendix of original documents and facsimiles, appeared at a time when the vexed question of the validity of English orders was fiercely debated by members of the Anglican and Roman communions, and it attracted considerable attention (Academy, 26 April 1884) . ”

“ As to the inference you draw from what I call the fundamental principles of our government, prove that the Anglican church holds them, and I will allow her to be an ally of despotism; but you shall bring your proofs from her canons, articles, and liturgy, not from the servants of court-chaplains, or the flatteries of those who forget the priest in the sycophant. Wolves and worldlings creep into every church. The apostolic age had its Demas, and ours has its Williams. ”

“ And next I cannot deny, what must be ever a very sore point with Anglicans, that, if any Anglican comes to me after careful thought and prayer, and with deliberate purpose, and says, "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church, and that your Church and yours alone is it, and I demand admittance into it," it would be the greatest of sins in me to reject such a man, as being a distinct contravention of our Lord's maxim, "Freely ye have received, freely give." ”

“ There remain to be considered the Anglican Establishment—this being the church to which belongs the writer who accuses the Catholic Church of having changed in faith, and deprived her children of their moral and mental freedom—and the newest sect of all, namely, the so-called Old Catholics, owing to the same writer’s admiration of those who figure in its ranks. ”

“ A man had to choose whether he would adhere to the old, or adopt the new form of faith—whether he would remain staunch to the reformed Anglican Church, or cast in his lot with the Puritans, or with one or other of the rising sects,—whether Episcopacy or Presbyterianism most conformed to his ideas of Church government. ”

“ Bishops and clergy alike neglected their duties. "Every one laughs if one talks of religion," said a foreigner visiting England. Yet still only persons professing the Anglican religion were eligible for civil and military posts. ”

“ But, as We stated at the beginning, there is nothing We so deeply and ardently desire as to be of help to men of good-will by showing them the greatest consideration and charity. Wherefore We ordered that the Anglican Ordinal, which is the essential point of the whole matter, should be once more most carefully examined.
In the examination of any rite for the effecting and administering of a sacrament, distinction is rightly made between the part which is ceremonial and that which is essential, usually called the matter and form. ”

“ The Anglican theory of an inspired but occasionally corrupt and lying church is just as well supported as the Anglican's faith in the Trinity. What right have the members of the Alliance to decide that this dogma is a matter of faith, and that other is only a matter of opinion? All the contradictory doctrines, they tell us, are found in the Bible. Who has the right to decide which are binding upon the conscience, and which are open to individual choice ”

“ But many of its leaders have been among the glories of the Church of England, and I could never speak of them with disrespect.
Catholicism, whether Roman or Anglican, stands to lose heavily by the decay of institutionalism as an article of faith. It is becoming impossible for those who mix at all with their fellow-men to believe that the grace of God is distributed denominationally. The Christian virtues, so far as we can see, flower impartially in the souls of Catholic and Protestant, of Churchman and Schismatic, of Orthodox and Heretic. ”

“ The Anglican Church, a fabric of policy compounded of Catholicism without a Pope and Biblical Protestantism, was in the throes of a struggle between those two elements, largely antiquarian and of little importance compared with the vital question as to the evidences of revelation and the divinity of Christ. ”

“ No offence has been proved against you, and as you are English, we will give you the benefit of the charming Anglican doctrine, which, if it were really practised in England, or elsewhere, would make society impossible. ”

“ The effect of his policy was to narrow the bounds of the church, but within the limits that he assigned it he made the Anglican establishment a stubbornly powerful and homogeneous organisation which proved capable a few years later of maintaining its existence against what seemed to be overwhelming odds. ”

“ We see a man marked out by an Anglican bishop for ecclesiastical duties, without any sacramental grace, spiritual character, or jurisdiction, for no less a work than the care of immortal souls. Let us see now what instruments he has wherewith to accomplish this. ”

“ This doctrine has been made of faith in the Roman communion, but has not yet ecumenical acceptance, and therefore may be doubted without sin by members of the Greek or Anglican Churches. What we need to avoid, as the Lambeth Conference has reminded us, is a purely insular and provincial attitude in relation to doctrines which have not been formally set forth by Anglican authority. The Anglican Church has tried its best to impress upon us that there is no such thing as an Anglican Religion; there is but one Religion--the Religion of God's Catholic Church. ”

“ Let the reader reflect, for a minute, on the essential characteristic of the Anglican Reformation, as it began under Wycliff, in a translation of the Scriptures, and then weigh the importance of the following citation from a Romish periodical.
“Who will not say,” says the Dublin Review, “that the uncommon beauty and marvellous English of the Bible is not one of the great strongholds of heresy in this country. It lives on the ear like a music that can never be forgotten, like the sound of the church-bell, which the convert hardly knows how he can forego. ”

“ It is well known to every one, that many of the doctrines, and the entire constitution of these sects, are as opposed to the teaching and discipline of the Anglican Church, as they are to the faith and ecclesiastical government professed by all the Eastern Churches. ”

“ The Anglican clergy were not like the Irish priesthood, in close sympathy with the peasantry, or like the Scottish ministers, the organs of strong convictions spreading through the great mass of the middle and lower classes. A man of energy, who took his faith seriously, was, like the Evangelical clergy, out of the road to preferment, or, like Wesley, might find no room within the church at all. ”

“ The Anglican Church retains only the Biblical symbolism of “the blessing of the hand.” Presbyterians and other Protestant churches have abandoned the use, except the Lutherans. We need not here trace the history of Christian worship, in daily services (Acts ii. 46) , or on the Lord’s Day (Acts xx. 7) , meeting for the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. xi. 17-34) , or for mutual edification in prayer, praise and prophecy (1 Cor. xiv.) . These things represent the ideal of Christendom. In the words of an eminent Roman Catholic scholar, Monsignor Duchesne, “Faith unites, theology often separates.” ”

“ I had a supreme confidence in our cause; we were upholding that primitive Christianity which was delivered for all time by the early teachers of the Church, and which was registered and attested in the Anglican formularies and by the Anglican divines. That ancient religion had well-nigh faded out of the land through the political changes of the last 150 years, and it must be restored. ”

“ Because Anglican bishops and priests, at the time of ordination, join in a profession contrary to the Catholic faith in the holy sacrifice, thus assuming on themselves, by their own act, the spirit and erroneous intentions with which the alterations were made. ”

“ The Anglican Church is also characteristically English in its dislike for logic and intellectual consistency and in its distrust of undisciplined emotionalism, which in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was known and dreaded under the name of 'enthusiasm.' This type is not essentially aristocratic. It does not traverse the higher ideals of the working class, which respects and admires the qualities of the 'gentleman,' though it resents the privileges long connected with the name. ”