Church reform

“ There is not a congregation of people in Europe, calling itself a Church, that is founded upon an understanding of the Sacred Scriptures, the understanding which shows that the "letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life."
I impugn, as being in error,—I denounce, as that error is the cause of all dissent, of dissent uninstructed,—all the churches or congregations called churches in the British dominions; and I call for a reform that shall eradicate that dissent, and make all become one in efficiency, usefulness, and respect and affections of the people. ”

“ The place of the Church in the Constitution is forgotten; so when there is a complaint that impurity is sapping the strength of the nation, or that cheating is ruining trade, or that selfishness is making men scamp work, it is not the clergy who are called on to do their duty and make a cure, but a new society is formed or a new law is demanded, and the clergy are not even rebuked for neglect. No one seems to expect that a Church, nominally co-extensive with the nation, which is established to spiritualise life, should do its work. ”

“ If a reform does progress on those universal principles, we need look no farther for, nor await future years to reveal, the final reformation resulting in the restoration of all things to the Scriptural ideal.
The errors of the religious world are, and have been, the failure to so preach salvation truth that people may obtain and enjoy full deliverance from sin; failure to conform to the divine standard on all lines; the human ecclesiastical system, which hinders Holy Spirit organization and government; and separation of God's people into parties, thus making true church relation impossible. ”

“ Here we can see the reason that no church in any age of the world has inaugurated any great system of reform for the improvement of society, but has made war on nearly every reform set on foot by that class of people which it has chosen to stigmatize as "infidels." Such a religion will decline and die in the exact ratio of the enlightenment and progress of society. ”

“ The practical part of my proposition for a Reform in the Church, is, that all indefensible superstition or mystery be banished or explained, that it be made the best possible general school for the people, to which the knowledge of the time is equal; that the people being the Church, and the Ministers not being the Church, the property of the Church in each parish shall be managed by the parishioners as their property, and the best provision be made with that property, including tithes, that can be made for all the physical and moral necessities of the people. ”

“ Our consistency increases, instead of diminishing, the evils we would cure. The reformers started wrong. They would reform the Church by placing her under human control. Their successors have in each generation found they did not go far enough, and have, each in its turn, struggled to push it farther and farther, till they find themselves without any church life, without faith, without religion, and beginning to doubt if there be even a God. ”

“ We must also acknowledge that in the Church the rust of abuses and of a mechanical superstition is always forming afresh; that the spiritual in religion is sometimes materialised, and therefore degraded, deformed, and applied to their own loss, by the servants of the Church, through their indolence and want of intelligence, and by the people, through their ignorance. The true spirit of reform most, therefore, never depart from the Church, but must periodically break out with renovating strength, and penetrate the mind and the will of the clergy. ”

“ It is never too late to reform and do justly; but the later the reform is deferred, the more necessity that the justice be rigid and prompt. I feel that if I had your authority, I could save the Church and its property, not for a farther career of its iniquity and error, but as a noble institution for the good of the people, a sufficient school for all, and a hospital for the infirm ”

“ Promotion of Social Reform.—As an institution hoary with age, the church is naturally conservative, and it has been slow to champion the various social reforms that have been proposed as panaceas. It has been quite as much concerned with a future existence as with the present, and has been prompt to point to heavenly bliss as a balance for earthly woe. ”

“ And within the English Church itself there was much to call for reform. Its attitude in the strife for the Charter as well as the after work of the Primate had made it more popular than ever; but its spiritual energy was less than its political. The disuse of preaching, the decline of the monastic orders into rich landowners, the non-residence and ignorance of the parish priests, lowered the religious influence of the clergy. The abuses of the time foiled even the energy of such men as Bishop Grosseteste of Lincoln. ”

“ If the Bishops have one item of wisdom among them, they will take me by the hand, and put their houses in order this way: if not, you and they may dissipate the existing Church Property, which you say you will not do; and after, we shall begin to form such a-new, and recover what we can of that property. I shall not despair of taking an active part in this thorough Reform of the Church while life remains: the People can do it for themselves, if Clergy, Ministers and King will not consent. ”

“ The Church has pusillanimously left, not only the working oar, but the very reins of salutary reform in the hands of men she denounces as inimical to Christianity, and who are practically doing, with all their might, for humanity's sake, what the Church ought to be doing for Christ's sake ”

“ When the Reformation period began, and the popes and the clergy refused the necessary reforms in the Church, those who supported that great movement detached themselves, in large numbers, from the papal party, but continued to assert their unfaltering fidelity to the primitive Christian faith. The reigning authorities were thus confronted with a disintegrating Church, occasioned by their own refusal to reform acknowledged abuses—some of which were so flagrant as to furnish a reason to the Jesuits for the recognition of their society. ”

“ They read prayers, which is a palpable absurdity; they preach sermons to spread superstitious notions of the Supreme Being, and perform ceremonies—baptism, and so forth—which are obviously silly. The church is a mere state machine worked in subservience to the sinister interest of the governing classes. The way to reform it would be to equalise the pay: let the clergy be appointed by a 'Minister of Public Instruction' or the county authorities; abolish the articles, and constitute a church 'without dogmas or ceremonies' ”

“ There is a loud clamour for extensive change in that department. The clamour would be entitled to more respect if they who are the most eager to swell it with their voices were not generally the most ignorant of the real state of the Church, and the service it renders to the community. Reform is the word employed. Let us pause and consider what sense it is apt to carry, and how things are confounded by a lax use of it. The great religious Reformation, in the sixteenth century, did not profess to be a new construction, but a restoration of something fallen into decay, or put out of sight. ”

“ The Roman Catholic Church is the result of centuries of drifting away from the New Testament pattern. Since it reached the zenith of its power, many other denominations have resulted from unsuccessful and incomplete efforts to reform the Catholics or some other existing group. In most cases the movement of the reformers, because of indifference and a lack of conviction in their ranks, eventually lost ground. In every instance, consciously or unconsciously, something besides the Bible has been accepted as authority. ”

“ Such were the forces at work in the Church when at length circumstances allowed the long deferred Council to meet. The Christian Renaissance, with its ideal of the unity of faith and reason and its attempt to find a place within the Church for all that was best in the achievements of the human mind, its philosophy, its science, and its art, was rapidly being eclipsed by a new spirit, which claimed for Church authority complete control, and gave little scope to human freedom and self-realisation. ”

“ In the proposals for reformation, decided improvements were introduced in church order and church discipline, in so far as this could be done without prejudice to the interests of the hierarchy. German, Spanish, and especially French bishops, as well as the commissioners for Catholic courts urged at first, in the interests of conciliation and reform, for permission to priests to marry and the granting of the cup to the laity, the limiting of the number of fasts and of the worship of saints, relics, and images, as well as the more extreme hierarchical extravagances. ”

“ Those politicians who are moved only by agitation may say, ‘The condition of the Church is not one of practical politics,’ and pass on. The greater number realising that the ultimate conflict is between those who would govern with God and those who would govern without God, and anxious that the Church should be effective for its purpose, are quietly making up their minds to one of two solutions—Disestablishment or Reform. ”

“ No man can reasonably say, let us not be of one Church; but every man can reasonably say, let the Church be purified of its errors; and while any man can show an error, it is his duty to call for the purification, and the duty of authorities to attend to his call and to purify. A permanent Church then must be an improving, self-purifying Church, and continue a true picture of the best state of the human mind, meeting every well-founded and majority-decided call upon its utility. ”

“ Nor, in the end, will the multitude of unsanctified professors which the proposed reformation would necessarily exclude, have any reason to rejoice in the unfaithfulness of those that either through ignorance, or for filthy lucre's sake, indulged them with a name and place in the Church of God. These unfaithful stewards, these now mistaken friends, will one day be considered by such as their most cruel and treacherous enemies. These, then, are our sentiments upon the entire subject of Church-reformation; call it latitudinarianism, or Puritanism or what you please ”

“ The church is always trying to get other people to reform; it might not be a bad idea to reform itself a little, by way of example. ”

“ We ought not to forget that it is the civil power which appoints our bishops, sits in judgment on the conflicting opinions which divide the clergy, and rules the destiny of our church; and we know, from very painful experience, that the civil power, whether embodied in a Whig or a Tory administration, has uniformly evinced a stronger liking for ceremonial pomp and display, than for the beautiful simplicity of the church of the New Testament. Hence, I believe that reformation is hopeless, as Cæsar disdains to admit the supremacy of Jesus of Nazareth. ”

“ The pivot of all subsequent controversy, dissension, and alienation turned upon the question whether this sharply drawn line was not wholly an arbitrary one, not adjusted by a principle of consistency, but of the nature of a compromise. This question was followed by another: Why should the process of reformation in the Church, so resolute and revolutionary in changing its institution and discipline and ritual, stop at the stage which it has already reached? ”

“ There is an uneasy desire among a vast many well-disposed persons to get the fruits of the Christian Faith, without troubling themselves about the Faith itself. This is done under the sanction of Peace Societies, Temperance and Moral Reform Societies, in which the end is too often mistaken for the means. When the Almighty sent His Son on earth, it was to point out the way in which all this was to be brought about, by means of the Church; ”

“ Here, indeed, was the startling proposition to begin anew—to begin at the beginning; to ascend at once to the pure fountain of truth, and to neglect and disregard, as though they had never been, the decrees of popes, cardinals, synods and assemblies, and all the traditions and corruptions of an apostate church. Here was an effort not so much for the reformation of the church as was that of Luther and of Calvin and of Haldanes, but for its complete restoration at once to its pristine purity and perfection. By coming at once to the primitive model and rejecting all human imaginations ”

“ Ever since the Reformation the reformed churches had been in a state of uncertainty, like a Dotheboys Hall after it had expelled its Squeers, full of earnestness and deep conviction, but undecided as to what kind of church they wanted, how it ought to be governed, what the conditions of membership ought to be and where the seat of authority should reside. ”

“ We are going to be compelled to alter our catechisms and creed in the face of the Protestants; going to be compelled to teach the opposite of what we have always taught; going to part with immemorial safeguards against altering the conditions of salvation, or further narrowing the terms of membership in the Church—to part with the necessity before every such change of the open and formal process of a General Council! The proposed dogma is unlike any now in the creed, in the all-important point of being self-multiplying. ”

“ They have ambitiously undertaken to set up again an authoritative visible Church, even though they lacked the gifts of the Spirit for it, and were without the necessary apostolic commission. They insisted on their form of sacraments as essential to salvation; they {122} drew up their infallible creeds; they set up Church officials who were to rule over other men's faith, and they assumed a certain divine right to compel the consciences of their members. Most of the Reformers have even sanctioned the use of bonds and prisons to secure uniformity of faith! ”