National church

“ As the State has become increasingly lay, its moral weight has sunk, its hold on consciences become less. But the truth remains that religion is an element in the highest national life. 'A national Church alone can consecrate the whole life of a people [448] .' And a national Church can only mean an established Church, and a Church which either has great inherited wealth of its own, or is supported in part by national funds. ”

“ How clearly the men who used this language shewed that they fully comprehended the position and rights of a National Church; the obedience which "in all things temporal" the Church owes to the powers that are ordained of God; her complete independence and autonomy "in things purely spiritual"; and the great fact that by no political changes was this Church severed from the Church of England or from the historic Church of all the ages, so long as she continued "stedfast in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in the breaking of the bread and the prayers!" ”

“ No one, except perhaps Dr Robert Lee, has done more during the last generation to widen the national church. Two positions on which he repeatedly insisted in the Assembly have taken a firm hold of the mind of that church, first, that it is of the essence of a church to be comprehensive of various views and tendencies, and that a national church especially should seek to represent all the elements of the life of the nation ”

“ The State may need an established national church as much as ever to enable it to fulfil its highest functions, but any 'Establishment' in these days must be consistent with the fullest recognition of the spiritual and political liberties of those members of the State who belong to other religious bodies, and also must be based upon recognition that the Church and State are fundamentally distinct, and relatively independent societies. ”

“ It is associated in the national mind with all that is sacred and venerable in the past. In its creed and its worship it presents the Christian religion in a way to command the respect of the educated classes; it is seated in the Universities, and is thus associated with science and learning. As it is the National Church, it has the support of all the rank of the kingdom, and arrays on its side the strongest social influences. Thus it sets even fashion on the side of religion. ”

“ The ritual and the doctrine, which are often regarded as ends, are the means to this further end. A National Church exists to connect the life of individuals and the life of the nation with the life of God, in Whom all fulness is, to fill men with grace and truth, to make them to respond to high emotions and settle them on eternal calm. Its object is to make men friends, to unite all classes in common aims, to give them open minds, willing to learn, and to introduce them to whatever is honest and of good report. The Church aims to develop the sense of duty through the sense of God. ”

“ The people—who, for the most part, were passionately attached to the simple fabric of their national church, and dreamt of no rivalship or enmity to it except in episcopacy—how they must have felt at the novel sight of a group of men who, in declaring against bishops, also found fault with sessions and synods, with indeed all ecclesiastical action whatever, considering each congregation independent in itself, and no member of it less entitled to pray and preach than the pastor! ”

“ When a king or noble visited some church, it was held that the visitor paid a high compliment to the clergy if he freed a slave or a captive before their altar. The national character of the Church deeply affected the life of the State. Its unity in a large measure gave unity to the people, and created the nation. ”

“ In the incidents we have been reviewing voluntary churches may find hints at least towards the justification of their principle. The idea of a national church is on more than one side intelligible and valid. ”

“ But the clergy of the establishment, clinging tenaciously in the face of notorious facts to the fond fancy that theirs is the national church, however small a fragment of the nation really belongs to it, decline to give us the number either of their communicants or of those who habitually frequent their churches. ”

“ It is rapidly becoming their established Church, and it will have, we may safely predict, the same narrowing effect upon their mind, it will beget the same inability to perceive the injustice of a political advantage, which the national Church has had upon its supporters. ”

“ It is the endeavour to build the Church on a basis of authority, whether external to the nation, as the Pope, in the ages in which Christendom was conceived of as a visible kingdom, or internal to the nation, as is necessary when the nation rises to the consciousness of individuality, and the assertion of the independence of the national life. ”

“ The churches of all denominations are filled to overflowing; the proportion of communicants to attendants is very large; and the foreign missions, and other religious societies, are supported on a scale of remarkable liberality.
There is no established church or dominant religious persuasion in the States. There are no national endowments; all are on the same footing, and live or die as they obtain the suffrages of the people. While the State does not recognise any one form of religion, it might be expected that she would assist the ministers of all. ”

“ Wherever we find the notion of a church particular, there must be government in that church; and why a national society incorporated into one civil government, joining into the profession of christianity, and having a right thereby to participate of gospel ordinances, in the convenient distributions of them in the particular congregations, should not be called a church, I confess I can see no reason. ”

“ At the close of the war which secured our national independence and created the republic the Catholic Church found herself, for all practical purposes, unfettered and free to enter upon a field which to her, we may say, was new. At that time there were in the whole country not more than forty thousand Catholics and twenty-five priests. In all the land there was not a convent or a religious community. ”

“ It is true that each nation has a national clergy and hierarchy—a principle not too Catholic—and also that each exercises some slight pressure—greater in societies of Catholic culture than of Protestant—upon the appointment of the church's ministry—particularly of bishops. ”

“ Now, it cannot be denied that there are thousands of our laymen fully competent to co-operate with the clergy in every branch of religious science, art, and charity. If they would add their minds to their money, and put their own individual energies to the wheel, a power would at once be created in the church of the United States irresistible to its enemies, and a certain guarantee of the glory and triumph of our holy faith. ”

“ No doubt it is at first sight a fair vision, this inclusion of all decently orderly and decently Christian ministries in the land within one pale of order and law: one service, one liturgy, one recognised ministry, one administration of ordinances, throughout the whole country,—the whole people taught out of the same books, at the same time, and by men who have the same claim to their attention, until the nation, in the visible uniformity of its religious acts and expressions, presents a fair image of one visible Church. ”

“ Among the forces working for the upbuilding of the Republic, religion stands preëminent, the most powerful, the most pervasive, the most irresistible of them all. A free church in a free state, all its edifices have been built by private contribution, all its magnificent benefactions sustained by voluntary offerings, induced in every instance by the principle of Christian love. ”

“ They will propose to the Patriarch such aid as the Church in the United States can supply, in the advancement of Christian education, and in the promulgation of religious truth, always avoiding the points in which the two Churches still differ, and leaving the producing of a closer mutual conformity to the blessing of God, on the friendly correspondence of the respective heads of the Churches, or to a future General Council. ”

“ What a splendid and perdurable creation is not the glorious union of Church and State—a church regulated by fixed rules of divine origin, deriving influence and beauty from its connection with the secular government ”

“ The men who were the backbone of the anti-slavery movement, who were nursing fathers to the Bible Society, and established the Church Missionary Society, were not narrow-minded bigots, but held the true Catholic Faith concerning the kingdom of God. ”

“ It is not my purpose to frame a general indictment against persons and movements, but rather to suggest certain ways and means of possible recovery, and in general I shall try to confine myself to that form of organized religion to which I personally adhere, that is to say, the Anglican or Episcopal Church, partly because of my better knowledge of its conditions, and partly because whatever is said may in most cases be equally well applied to the Protestant denominations. ”

“ On this subject—on the real nature and unity of that great and widely-scattered society which we call the Church of God, and its real claims on the heart and conscience—on the question whether it is intrinsically desirable that the organization of a Church should be vigorous and firmly strung, or lax and pliant—on these and other questions lying outside the range of the foregoing remarks every man has a right to his own opinions, and I have mine. ”

“ The church which ought to be, and must be, is not for some of us, but for all of us. Even as the state is the political commonwealth to which all citizens belong, so the church is the spiritual commonwealth in which all souls should be included. ”

“ We, therefore, for the preservation, safe keeping, and increase of the Catholic flock, with the approval of the Sacred Council, do judge it to be necessary to propose to the belief and acceptance of all the faithful, in accordance with the ancient and constant faith of the universal Church, the doctrine touching the institution, perpetuity, and nature of the sacred Apostolic Primacy, in which is found the strength and solidity of the entire Church ”

“ Seeking thus the Kingdom of God, the Catholic priests of America will find that through their labours God has added unto their country all good things even in the temporal order. The Church in America is exhibiting every day more clearly her wondrous power as the civilizer of the nations. ”

“ Since writing the letter accompanying this, the Chiefs have conferred together respecting the state of religion among the Five Nations, which now appears to be a subject of more serious consideration among them than formerly. We are sensible, Sir, of the goodness of Government, among other benefits, in accommodating us with a church, and we have long been desirous of having a clergyman to reside constantly with us ”

“ These different races of Europe and the United States, constituting the body of the most civilized nations of the world, united in an intelligent appreciation of the divine character of the church, with their varied capacities and the great agencies at their disposal, would be the providential means of rapidly spreading the light of faith over the whole world, and of constituting a more Christian state of society. ”

“ It will be well for all religious bodies closely to scrutinize her educational success, her tender care for the sick, and all the other modes by which she generates and uses spiritual power. Surely no well-organized church with a pure Scriptural faith, claiming to have divine authority, can in this Protestant nation be content any longer to yield ground to a foreign church with a foreign ministry. ”

“ From one populous town to another it has moved, and has exhibited in the eyes of active, intelligent, and opulent communities, to many of whom 'Church' has hitherto been a term of isolation, and therefore of weakness, the spectacle of a Church — of the Church of England — as a vast corporate whole, loving much, energising abundantly, having its internal differences, but so confident in its intrinsic strength and in its deeper unity as to dare voluntarily to talk out those differences in the presence of universal journalism. ”

“ Whether, therefore, we come to England, America, Germany or France, or any other country where similar religious movements are going on, we ask them to cooperate with us; we ask the whole world to treat us a fellow-disciples, to give unto us all the good things they possess and enjoy for our benefit, that we may thus collect materials from all existing churches and religious denominations, in order in the fullness of time, to construct and uprear the future Church of the world. ”

“ But, I go a step farther and ask whether the Church as an organization—not any one denomination, but the Church universal—appreciates its great opportunities, its tremendous responsibility, and the infinite power behind it. If the Church is what we believe it to be it must be prepared to grapple with every problem, individual and social, whether it affects only a community or involves a state, a nation, or a world. There must be some intelligence large enough to direct the world or the world will run amuck. ”

“ I doubt if the Catholic Church has ever abrogated or ignored her old right to meddle in the politics of a state or nation. I do not know, nor do I believe, that the Catholic clergy in this our country take it upon themselves to instruct the people in their political duties. ”

“ And so, if we took an equal interest in the affairs of our divine commonwealth, our Christian church, and endeavoured as eagerly to promote every thing which tended to its welfare, and to put down and prevent every thing which might work it mischief, then the efforts of the clergy to advance Christ's kingdom would be incalculably aided, while there would then be no danger of our investing them with the duties and responsibilities which belong properly to the whole church ”