- Alliance between Church and State. By WILLIAM WARBURTON, D. D., Lord Bishop of Gloucester.
- Lectures on the Establishment and Extension of National Churches. By THOMAS CHALMERS, D. D. L. L. D.
- The State in its relations with the Church. By W. E. GLADSTONE, ESQ.
- The Principles of Church Reform; The State and the Church; with other Essays. By THOMAS ARNOLD, D. D.
- Essay on the Union of Church and State. By BAPTIST W. NOEL, M. A.
The subject discussed in these works is not one in which the people of this country are immediately and practically interested. The entire separation of the Church from the State was one of the most sublime, as it has proved one of the most successful, experiments of the American Revolution. And though among the problems in political science which have been solved by our national career, this perhaps has received the least consideration from statesmen, both at home and abroad; yet surely no other has worked out larger results, or been conducted to a more favorable issue. It may be doubted whether any question of a political, social or religious nature can be raised, upon which, as a people, we are more perfectly agreed than this. Amidst all the clashings of party politics, and all the jarrings of denominational strife, there is not probably one sincere Protestant among the twenty millions of our population, whether native-born or naturalized, who would consent to the establishment of a National Church.
We have spoken of the divorce between Church and State as an experiment: it is interesting to observe the necessity under which it was attempted, and which was itself no inconsiderable pledge of success. The statesmen of 1776 were no visonary constitution-mongers, like those who are now attempting to fit capricious France to a political costume; nor were they restless radicals, pulling down existing institutions to make room for model governments of their own invention. The republican form of government which they adopted was fully as much a necessity with them as a choice. The controversy with England was not begun for republicanism, though it ended in it: monarchy was not so much repudiated as liberty was sought. It is highly probable that if any branch of the royal family had resided in this country, and had sympathized with the passionate struggle of a young nation to be both great and free, the conservative spirit of our forefathers would have led to the establishment of monarchy upon these republican shores. But Providence had ordained that a palpable advance should be made, at this time, in the progress of mankind to liberty. There was no titled class, having the prestige of nobility and rank, from which a monarch could be chosen; and the statesmen of this period dwelt too much in the light of past history not to know the impossibility of lifting a single family from the uniform level of society to permanent presidency over the rest. They were too well skilled in political science not to be aware that the wide interval between the commonalty and the throne must be filled with an intermediate class, who should render the ascent less abrupt and precipitous. In all countries, a dignified and time-honored aristocracy must be found underlying and supporting every throne. All these conditions of monarchy failing, our forefathers showed their practical wisdom in striking the golden mean between the radicalism which invades and overturns only for the sake of remodeling, and that fatal conservatism which, in its blind attachment to inheritance and prescription, resists the progress which it should aim to guide. They did not change the whole political fabric “from turret to foundation-stone;” but only so far as the pressure of events imperiously called for. As the people were de facto sovereign, their sovereignty was acknowledged; and yet the country was saved from the savage rule of unlicensed democracy by the establishment of a great confederated republic, with its written constitution, and all those checks and balances which can be furnished in two deliberative chambers, the presidential veto, and State sovereignty.
Precisely by the same necessity which caused monarchy, with its hereditary nobility, to resign to primitive republicanism, did the established Church likewise disappear. Bishop Warburton, among his other splendid fictions of original compacts and treaties of alliance, imagines the State coolly to choose between existing religions (though he maintains that policy should always dictate the selection of the largest); we nevertheless take leave to say that this prudential balancing of conflicting claims never has been, and never shall be, realized. Before a Church can be established by law, it must embrace the overwhelming majority of the population—it must be interwoven with their most pleasing associations—it must enjoy the prestige of a long antiquity. At the period of the revolution, no one Church possessed any of these requisites. Dissent had previously won its way in those countries from which our population was mainly supplied; and the Churches which had sprung up and grown under the very frown of existing establishments, were transplanted here side by side. There was clearly the same impossibility, under the circumstances, that any one of these should take such precedence of the rest as to be established by law, as that a single family should achieve and entail a perpetual dictatorship. There was no alternative but to throw off all alike from any connection with the State; that no longer sucking the breasts of kings they should live and grow by their own inherent vitality. The wisdom of our ancestors consisted in seeing at a glance the peculiarity of their position—in waiving instantly all prejudices arising from education and habit—in seizing upon the true idea which alone could be realized—and in boldly cutting off what no conservatism could retain. The question of an established Church, like that of a monarchical government, was decided by them not upon abstract principles, however these may now be adduced to justify their decision; but for political reasons, which nevertheless impelled them in the right direction.
But while the controversy upon Church establishments is no longer one which touches our fortunes as a people, there are yet two reasons which invest it with a permanent interest to us. The first is, that it is so closely interwoven with all the questions of European politics; and at no period more than the present prominently engaging the attention of statesmen. The late secession of the Free Church from the establishment of Scotland, under the guidance, to a very great extent, of one who not ten years before was known as the special defender of this policy—and the more recent secession of individuals from the English establishment, as of Mr. Noel and Mr. Shore, together with the treatment they have received from Bishops and Bishop’s Courts—are events not easily hidden from the eyes of men. And when, as in England and in Scotland, the dissenters of all classes perhaps outnumber the established, the question cannot always slumber in the recesses of men’s thoughts, but will be raised with a view to be answered, how long a union so distasteful shall be perpetuated. It is impossible, therefore, without some knowledge of this subject, to understand the politics of Europe generally, and of the British empire in particular: and to gain this knowledge we must enter somewhat into the opinions and feelings of those who are attached to the policy we have so long discarded. The second reason is, that some topics involved in this controversy we do not ourselves understand as fully as may be necessary. As champions of the voluntary principle, having faith in it to reduce it into practice, it becomes us, for our own credit and for the good of mankind, to guard against dangers which tend to prejudice our favorite theory in the minds of others.
No one can read the above works in the order in which they are arranged, which is indeed only the order of their chronology, without observing the manifest alteration in their tone; a change which is deeply significant of the progress which dissent has made. A progress slow indeed and gradual; but which indicates at every step an immense accession of strength, and a permanency of power not likely to be subject to material fluctuations. If the bearing of an army ever afforded presage of defeat, the altered tone of these advocates clearly prefigures the doom which they in vain strove to avert. Warburton, the first in the series, takes hold of the subject not only with the composure of a man who knows his own strength, but with the confidence of one secure of general sympathy, and scarcely repressing contempt for his foes. At that day, few serious persons comparatively objected to the establishment on religious grounds; and the battle was waged chiefly against skeptics, who fancied that by this avenue the bulwarks of Christianity could be stormed. Warburton conducts his argument, therefore, with all the clearness, skill, and power for which he is so justly famed; but blurting out occasionally his invectives against the free-thinkers, who seemed to serve for him the office of a court fool to be perpetually bantered. According to his theory, the State and the Church are originally both independent and sovereign societies; having different ends in view, and hence not clashing, although the same persons may be under the jurisdiction of both. The office of the State is to provide for the temporal interests of man; that of the Church, for his eternal interests—the care of the one is confined to the body; that of the other is directed to the soul—the one looks upon offenses as crimes; the other takes cognizance of them as vices and as sins. He next shows that civil society labors under certain defects for the attainment of its ends; it can only restrain from open transgression, nor always from this without opening the way to crimes still more flagitious; it cannot enforce the duties of imperfect obligation; and further often inflames the appetites which it proposes to correct. Now religion, having the sanction of rewards, while civil government has only that of punishments, exactly supplies these defects; and so the Church becomes necessary, as a complement to the State. The latter, therefore, proposes to the former a union for their mutual benefit; and this amalgamation is termed ‘an alliance,’ to indicate the original sovereignty of the parties. By this alliance, the State pledges itself to endow, protect and extend the Church; and the Church, to lend her whole influence to the State. The reciprocal concessions are that the Church resigns her supremacy by constituting the civil ruler her supreme head, and by submitting her laws to the State’s approval: and the State in compensation gives to the Church a coactive power for the reformation of manners, and secures her a seat and representation in the national council. The motives which prompt the State to offer, and the Church to accept, these conditions, are that thereby the purity and being of religion are preserved, additional reverence is bestowed upon the person of the magistrate and upon the laws of the land, the Church obtains a coercive power which does not belong of nature to her, and the State is guarded against the mischiefs arising from the original independence of the Church in relation to it. The Church thus established is protected from the assaults of every rival by test-laws, designed only for restraint, and not for punishment; and beyond which a full toleration is indulged to every sect.
This is Warburton’s ideal of Church and State. Not that it is the actual process by which the union was effected; but the theory upon which it may be justified. He is warmly censured by Gladstone, for not recognizing the State as a moral person, having a conscience, and immediately responsible to God. Especially his selection of the largest religious society, rather than the truest and best, as the ally of State, is denounced as sordid calculation. By this same writer, and afterwards by Dr. Arnold, he is also rebuked for taking too low a view of the State, in restricting its office to material and temporal ends. Yet despite these criticisms, Warburton’s theory appears to us the most consistent and defensible of all that we have considered. There are, however, very grave difficulties in his scheme, which go far to vitiate it. We may admit, for example, that the State is defective in power to enforce certain duties, and that religion exactly supplies this deficiency; but it is surely a wide leap to infer from this the necessity of an established Church. If we grant the Church to be needed as the external organ, through which this influence of religion shall be exerted, will she not be equally effective in her separate sphere? From her very nature, it is hard to see how the Church shall supplement the State, save as she teaches men their duties, puts a police into every man’s breast by arraigning transgressors before the tribunal of conscience, and enforces her teachings and warnings by the awful sanctions of the eternal world. But all these offices she may discharge with equal if not with greater effect, being disestablished. If she has more power than this, after her connection with civil government, it is not power which she brings with her, but which she receives from the State; and it seems a vicious circle, to bring the Church to remedy the State’s defects, and yet in rendering this service, derive from the State her whole efficiency. If, on the other hand, the Church exerts an influence, simply as she embodies and teaches religion, the State may lose rather than gain, by selecting only one religious society as its ally, while it is the province of each to furnish its quota.
It will also strike religious minds very strangely, that this alliance is necessary in order to preserve the purity and even the being of religion in the world. Hardly less monstrous is the proposition that the State cannot effectually protect itself in any other way, from the mischiefs arising from the Church’s independency. We should rather expect a dignitary of the Church to teach that her life is derived alone from her spiritual Head, and to remember the promise which that Head has given, “because I live ye shall live also.” As to the maintenance of purity, history would rather teach that the Church has always lost, in this particular, just in proportion as she has become Erastian. But we are concerned, at present, only with the inconsistencies of Warburton’s theory as such. If the Church exists as a society, independent of the State, it must be by a life of her own; but to make the perpetuation of this life depend upon union with a foreign body, is simply to deny that inherent life which has just been affirmed. It is a main pillar of his argument, likewise, that these sovereign and separate societies do not clash, simply because they compass different ends by different means. If so, whence arise those mischiefs which the State dreads from the separate action of the Church? Surely the legs of this theory are not equal.
What too does Bishop Warburton mean when he teaches that the State cannot offer protection to the Church, except by compact? “The State,” he says, “could not justly offer this benefit, security from all exterior violence, had an alliance never been made.”1Alliance between Church and State, vol. 7, works. If this protection be only a protection in the monopoly of chartered privileges, it is certainly true that it will depend upon a given contract to that effect. But, then, the main thing to be proved, is whether any Church can be justly secured in the enjoyment of such benefits; and whether the State, in departing from its province, has not become an instrument of oppression to those whom the establishment may exclude. If, on the other hand, the “exterior violence” arises not from rival religions, but simply refers to wrongs which the Church may experience from society at large, surely the State cannot withhold its protection from the Church, more than from any other corporation having vested rights. This would militate against his theory, which makes it the sole business of the State proper to give security of temporal liberty and property.
We add but one item further to this running criticism upon Bishop Warburton. He makes it a main advantage accruing from the alliance, that the Church gains a coercive power for the reformation of manners. But is the Church, as a separate society, devoid of discipline and of sanctions? Has she not the right, inherent in every society, of expelling unworthy members from her fellowship? And has she not spiritual penalties with which to support her jurisdiction, graduated from this excommunication down to the mildest form of censure? As a spiritual society, ought she ever to employ any other than a spiritual discipline? And have the civil pains and disabilities, which she borrows from the State, ever strengthened her rule over the conscience, or even over the conduct of men? After all, too, there is no real reformation of manners effected by the Church, save by her doctrines and her purifying influence: in proportion as she is pure, does her influence ramify itself, by means of her members, through all the departments of society. She not only needs not, but is seriously injured by that coercive power derived from the State, for which Bishop Warburton so strenuously argues.
Dr. Chalmers drew his pen to defend Church establishments against a different class of objectors from those opposed by the preceding writer. Religious men, who loved the cause and truth of God, had come to be scandalized at the corruption and slavery of a thoroughly Erastianized Church. Dr. Chalmers undertook to reduce the idea of an establishment to such simplicity as would seem to meet the scruples of the most conscientious.
In his view, an established Church is simply an endowed Church. Take the following language from his first lecture:
“We shall assume, then, as the basis of our definition for a religious establishment, or as the essential property by which to specify and characterize it—a sure legal provision for the expense of its ministrations. … Wherever we have a certain legal provision for the ministrations of Christianity, there we have an establishment of Christianity in the land. It is this which forms the essence of an establishment; and as such, must be singled out from among all the other accessories wherewith it may happen to be variegated. This idea of an establishment may or may not imply what is commonly meant by a connection between the Church and the State. If it be the State which maintains the Church, we admit that there is such a connection—whether this maintenance be their ancient and original gift; or a grant renewed every year, and which may or may not be recalled by the civil government. But the truth is, the maintenance may have originated in other sources—in the bequest of individuals, or numerous private acts of liberality: in our eyes it is not less an establishment on this account, than if supported by a direct allowance from the national treasury. To realize our idea of an establishment, it is enough that there be legal security for the application of certain funds to the maintenance of Christian worship or Christian instruction in a country; and this in whatever way these funds may have originated.”
This is not the first instance in which a stupendous system of economics has been built upon a pun; nor the first instance in which a worthless argument has escaped exposure by sheltering itself under a great name. On this subject, the term “established” has a fixed meaning, involving two ideas: that of patronage on the part of the State, and submission on the part of the Church. Dr. Chalmers, by a slight play upon words, changes at once the nomenclature, and with it the whole issue, of this controversy. The object of this clever legerdemain is very apparent no person objects, on principle, to a certain provision being made for the support of religion, nor indeed to a special fund to endow the Church for this purpose; although the expediency of such a measure may be questioned by many. And if this view could be taken of Church establishments, much suspicion and odium would be removed. This, then, is the establishment for which he pleads: a Church endowed by the State, but left wholly independent of the same:
“Although,” he argues, “the Church should be wholly supported by the State in things temporal, and a connection between them be established thus far, it follows not that this connection should proceed any further. … Although the Church should receive its maintenance, and all its maintenance from the civil power, it follows not that it therefore receives its theology from the same quarter. … The Church receives from the State the maintenance of its clergy; and the clergy, in return, give to the subjects of the State a Christian education; but they might and do reserve to themselves the whole power and privilege of determining what that education shall be. For their food and their raiment, and their sacred or even private edifices, they may be indebted to the State; but their creed, and their discipline, and their ritual, and their articles of faith, and their formularies, whether of doctrine or of devotion, may be altogether their own. … The Church may submit herself so far to the State as to receive this maintenance, and yet abide as spiritual, as holy and independent a Church as before.”
Even philosophers indulge in romances. Plato amuses himself with the dream of a perfect republic, and Chalmers with the dream of an unfettered establishment. We certainly are not so ill-natured as to disturb the sportings of a playful fancy; and only complain when these pleasant fictions are passed for sober realities. An establishment of this sort never existed upon earth. But a few years’ further experience—years, however, of earnest strife, on the part of the State and of the Church—taught how impracticable was the theory here so eloquently advocated. The secession of the Free Church, with Dr. Chalmers at its head, turned upon this single point, that the State exacted a quid pro quo; and patronage was but another name for bondage. It is but candid, however, to state that from the principles of these lectures, Dr. Chalmers never receded: and the Free Church still stands upon the right to demand of the State a complete maintenance, without the imposition of a single fetter. One of the deputation, which visited this country immediately after the disruption, on being asked if the Free Church had abandoned the principle of an establishment, replied in playful evasion, “we have adjourned that question until the millennium.” Yet, whether even in that happy state of the world, civil governments can unite with the Church without enslaving or being enslaved—and whether, in the most perfect state of society, the State should pour its treasures in the lap of the Church, without inquiry respecting the uses which it subserves-are both points, to say the least, which are more than doubtful.
Having framed the conception of a free, yet endowed Church, Dr. Chalmers proceeds to show the advantages it possesses. He is first brought into conflict with a class of political economists, who repeat in Parliament and at the hustings, the lesson they have conned from Adam Smith. Theirs has been termed the system of free trade in Christianity, which leaves in religion as in commerce the supply to be regulated by the demand. The satisfactory reply to this, we give in the following extract from the second lecture:
“It is not with man’s intellectual, or his moral, as it is with his animal nature Although it be true, that the longer he has been without food, the more hungry he is, or the greater and more urgent is his desire of food; yet the more ignorant a man is, not the greater, but generally speaking the less, is his desire of knowledge. … The less a man has, whether of religion or righteousness, the less does he care for them, and the less will he seek after them. It is thus that nature does not go forth in quest of Christianity; but Christianity must go forth in quest of nature. It is, on the one hand, the strength of the physical appetency; and on the other hand, the languor of the spiritual, the moral, or the intellectual appetency, which makes all the difference.”
We agree that Christianity must go forth into the highways and hedges—not under the direction of the State, but of the Church, to whom this special commission was given.
The third lecture is devoted to the proof of the insufficiency of the voluntary principle. Some of Mr. Noel’s statistics will help us shortly to cipher out this problem. At present it is enough to remark the sophistry of the leading argument by which voluntaryism is convicted of incompetency. It is that “in the shortcomings of the establishment, the voluntary principle has had an ample field for the trial of its energies.” Yes, when the establishment, with its hand upon the national purse, has thrust aside all competitors, professing to occupy the whole field; and when dissenters have had the burdens of the establishment superadded to the support of their own Churches, then to be twitted with insufficiency because they have not outstripped the State and its ally together—to make voluntaryism, struggling against fearful odds, responsible for all the destitutions in the land—this is such justice as may be looked for in a partisan. But of this more anon.
The remaining lectures are occupied with showing the considerations which should influence the State in selecting one denomination for the national religion, and in detailing the advantages of a territorial establishment. We could not but think in reading the last point that Dr. Chalmers was once more drawing upon a luxuriant imagination, in his glowing picture of the facilities possessed by a parish, over a congregational, minister. The former being assigned to a certain district of country, for the religious cultivation of which he is responsible, has the right to approach every family, within its limits, with the offer of the Gospel. The latter, on the contrary, has no charge beyond those who chose of their free will to place themselves under his instructions; of course, he feels himself an intruder whenever he approaches all families besides these. But if these families attend upon Church ordinances no where, what shall hinder the congregational minister from approaching them with as much freedom as the parish minister? Can there be any better warrant than the commission of Christ: “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature?” And can the commission of the State, ‘go, preach throughout the parish,’ be considered superior? Shall the man who approaches the irreligious around him, from love to their souls, be less acceptable, or feel himself more embarrassed, than he whose only differing claim is that he is paid for the service? If, on the other hand, these families have, in the due exercise of private judgment, chosen their own place of worship, what right has the State to commission one, and send him forth upon a proselyting errand? But Dr. Chalmers will say, that the parish minister, being supported by the State, can preach the Gospel without cost to the poor, and thus attract them to his instructions. But this advantage, secured to one set of religious opinions, is so much injury to another; and this brings up another principle which we will not discuss in this incidental connection. The territorial establishment is, however, important to Dr. Chalmers for another reason: it assists him in answering the question why the State should endow one Church to the exclusion of another, but little differing in doctrine. It is easy to say why Protestantism should be preferred over Popery by the State, because the differences between them are obvious. But between different branches of Protestants, those differences are slight; and why should one be preferred to all the rest? The answer is partly, that it is for the common good; the advantages of the territorial division cannot otherwise be had; and partly, if these differences are small, why do they exist, and why should they not be sacrificed by a union with that favored by the State. Truly this is modest. Honest convictions of truth are entertained: and when the complaint is that the State employs its tremendous power and wealth for their suppression, the answer is, why do you not conform?
Mr. Gladstone presents this subject from a different point of view still: he approaches it as a statesman. And it is no small proof of the growth of dissent, that, from his seat in Parliament, Mr. Gladstone judges the State to have “given too certain signs of an inclination to dissolve its connection” with the Church, and thus that “the mind of the former requires to be exercised on this subject” more than that of the latter. His work, written in Germanized English as it is, should be read by those who desire to see this controversy in every possible light. According to this writer, then, there are four lines of investigation, which conduct alike to the necessity of a national Church. The first is to collect the testimony of Scripture in favor of the union, whether given by precept or by examples; the second is to analyze the nature of the State, and to deduce a priori its duty in relation to religion; the third is, to inquire into the necessity of religion to the State, in order to its fulfilling both its higher and its lower ends; the fourth is an historical inquiry, designed to show the universal consent of mankind to this combination of the spiritual with the civil power. Thus the argument will be “direct, ethical, consequential and inductive:” the first being “the voice of command”—the second, “the voice of design”—the third, “the voice of penal admonition”—the fourth, “the voice of experience”—and corresponding severally to the formulars, “it is written, it is natural, it is expedient, it is customary.” This foundation is sufficiently broad; yet is not covered by the superstructure. Indeed Mr. Gladstone declines the first altogether; and the historical induction he deems to be superseded by the fact, that the opponents of an established religion do not bow to its decision. He, therefore, pursues it only so far as relates to the history of the English establishment. It is upon the second, or the ethical argument, that he concentrates his strength; and only under this does he pursue a track of thought, varying materially from those who preceded him. As the conclusion he reaches embraces one of the fundamental fallacies under which the whole argument in favor of Church establishments labors, viz: that the State is strictly a moral person, it will be interesting to follow Mr. Gladstone in his own language, as step by step he eliminates it. His starting point is “the oneness of life and action” in the universe, its “absolute and invariable dependence on a centre.” So far as the race of man is concerned, “this cardinal idea of unity, as the fundamental law of beauty and well-being,” was destroyed in the fall. Since that dismal hour, instead of one centre, there are as “many centres and rebellious systems of action,” as there are human beings. The great remedy which God proposes for this evil, is the scheme of redemption: yet, as an “intermediate expedient,” he establishes the law of association, by which they possess “a common or joint life,” reacting against the individualizing and selfish tendency introduced by sin. This common life is found in the family, in the tribe, in the nation, in the Church; and constitutes what is termed the personality of societies, so soon as it “assumes the determinate form of incorporation, and becomes subject internally to a deliberative regulating principle.” But this organization, while it checks one class of evils, introduces evils of its own, which call for a remedy; and the corrective element is found in “collective religion.” The social person, then, whose exponent always is its own recognized organ, is not only capable of religion, as the individual person is, but requires as much to be consecrated by it.
But at this point Mr. Gladstone feels constrained to pause and remove a difficulty which obstructs his further progress. Are there not other combinations among men, equally fulfilling the above definition of social personality, to wit: “incorporation and a deliberative regulating principle?” and shall these, as banks, canal companies, hospitals and the like, feel themselves capable of religion, and bound to be consecrated by it? This leads to a distinction between the degrees of personality in society. The conclusion is that only those associations admit of collective religion which are characterized by the following marks: they must be general, belonging to man as such; they must be natural, so that he is born into them; they must be permanent, so that they are parallel with his own existence; they must be moral, contemplating moral ends, requiring moral motives and restraints, and exercising moral influences. All these conditions meet in the family and the nation; between which a parallel is drawn at some length; and the ultimate conclusion is that the State is strictly a moral person, discharging moral offices, having of necessity a conscience, and only meeting its conscious responsibilities by professing a religion and “offering that worship which shall sanctify its acts.”
Against this sweeping conclusion a formidable objection lifts its stern front; in this view of the matter, the State would seem to be immortal, and capable of reward and punishment in a future life; and corporations after all may have souls. Mr. Gladstone says they have; at least they have souls as much as they have bodies, and it will hardly be said they have neither.” But admitting that these “public persons are confined to the sphere of this world,” their obligations are not thereby destroyed. It is further contended that States enjoy a quasi-immortality in their indefinite succession though different generations: and should these pleas fail, inasmuch as retribution is more strictly and immediately enforced upon States than upon individuals, this may be substituted in lieu of the sanctions of a future judgment. The State then stands before us a moral person, having the same obligations which press upon the individual conscience, and is bound to profess a religion. But religion is embodied and rendered visible in the Church; the State therefore fulfills this duty, like the individual, by connection with the Church. And as Mr. Gladstone recognizes only the Church with three orders and an uninterrupted apostolic descent, he is at no loss to decide with what religious society the State should be united. In this way he readily escapes from the “sordid calculation” of Bishop Warburton in choosing simply the largest society; and is disembarrassed of all those difficulties under which Dr. Chalmers labors in attempting to justify the State in the endowment of Episcopacy in England, and of Presbytery in Scotland. As the Church (we mean of course THE Church of Mr. Gladstone) has not only apostolic truth, but an apostolic descent in “a divinely appointed though human line,” it brings to the State that permanency which is so requisite, and to which the sects can never lay claim.
We will not pursue this author further: as from this point he treads in the same path with others, presenting the stereotype argument against the sufficiency of voluntaryism to supply a country with the ordinances of religion; and the stereotype defense from the charge that the alliance corrupts and enslaves the Church. It is obvious that independent of the main issue which Mr. Gladstone creates, his theory is open to minute criticism upon several of its points. For example, his grand doctrine that social organization in the family, tribe, etc., was simply corrective of that centrifugal tendency occasioned by sin, does it not include the idea that social relations formed no part of man’s original condition in his estate of holiness. How will Mr. Gladstone undertake to show that but for sin, or if men had retained their primitive integrity, they would never have existed in families and even in nations? Again, the idea that association in the State is an “intermediate expedient” preparing men for the work of redemption, the great remedy against sin, seems utterly to confound all the offices of the State and the Church together. But we forbear all special comments: the argument of Mr. Gladstone is one consistent whole, leading to an important, though we believe, a false conclusion. We waive all criticism until we shall be able to discuss at length this great question of the personality of the State.
It is refreshing to pass from the cumbrous and foreign style of Mr. Gladstone to the elegant and classical diction of Dr. Arnold. Although presenting his views in a briefer and more fragmentary way than the other, a style clear as amber discloses without an effort his meaning. We select Dr. Arnold not merely because he is a beautiful and popular writer, whose influence is as widely diffused as that of any recent English author, but because he is the bold expounder of another principle equally fallacious with that of which Mr. Gladstone was the patron. It is that the State has for its end—not as Warburton taught, the protection of life and property—but the more general end of promoting, by all methods, the moral and intellectual improvement of men. This is his language, speaking of the State: “Our physical wants may have led to its actual origin, but its proper object is of a higher nature; it is the intellectual and moral improvement of mankind, in order to their reaching their greatest perfection, and enjoying their highest happiness.”2Principles of Church Reform. Miscellaneous Works, p. 331. Since the confusion existing in men’s minds as to the true office and aim of the State is one main source of the endless discrepancy of opinion respecting Church establishments, we shall hereafter subject it to a special examination. At present, we wish the reader simply to observe how directly this principle led Dr. Arnold to avow the most glaring Erastianism. As the end and aim of the Church are defined by him in precisely the same terms, it follows that the two societies are identical. To employ his language:
“Thus the State, having been enlightened by the knowledge of the Church, becomes a society seeking the same end which the Church sought. And this was my meaning, when I said that in a country where the nation and government are avowedly and essentially Christian, the State or nation was virtually the Church.”3Fragment on the Church. Appendix II. p. 186.
How fully Dr. Arnold deserves to be considered the special representative of a certain form of Erastianism will appear from another extract:
“[When a State] chooses for itself the true religion, it declares itself Christian. But by so doing it becomes a part of Christ’s Holy Catholic Church: not allied with it, which implies distinctness from it, but transformed into it. But as for the particular portion of this Church which may have existed before within the limits of the State’s sovereignty—the actual society of Christian men there subsisting the State does not ally itself with such a society—for alliance supposes two parties equally sovereign—nor yet does it become the Church as to its outward form and organization; neither does the Church on the other hand become so lost in the State as to become, in the offensive sense of the term, secularized. The spirit of the Church is transfused into a more perfect body, and its former external organization dies away. The form is that of the State, the spirit is that of the Church; what was the kingdom of the world has become a Kingdom of Christ, a portion of the Church in the high and spiritual sense of the term; but in that sense in which ‘Church’ denotes the outward and social organization of Christians in any one particular place, it is no longer a Christian Church, but what is far higher and better, a Christian kingdom.”4Fragment on the Church. Appendix II. p. 177.
It is well to observe at what expense this blessing of a national Church is to be enjoyed. To most of our readers it will be a sufficient refutation, better than any argument of our own, simply to know that by this union the Church ceases as a spiritual body to exist: she is transfused into the State, and the two so thoroughly interpenetrate each other, that the Church becomes a “Christian kingdom,” and the State becomes a “portion of the Church.”
This low view of the Church probably led to the comprehensive scheme which Dr. Arnold gravely proposes as a remedy for “the monstrous evils of sectarianism.” He judges it possible to construct the articles of doctrine, the ritual of worship, and the form of government, upon such a scale, as shall comprehend nearly every class of religionists, and thus take away all occasion of dissent. For example, the different sects in England, Baptists, Methodists, Independents, Presbyterians, agree in the belief of certain fundamental truths: the existence of God and his providential care; the mission, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ; the scriptures revealing God’s will as a rule of faith and practice; the immutable distinction between right and wrong, etc. Now a scheme of doctrine so drawn as to express these general and admitted truths, devoid of technical and controversial phrases, might embrace all classes but the Quakers, Romanists and Unitarians. In the lapse of time, by softening whatever in the national. creed seems harsh to them, the best portions even of these three classes may be gained over to so Catholic an establishment. How far this writer would be willing to concede so as to win dissenting minds to a national creed will appear from an extract:
“If an Arian will join in the worship of Christ, and will call him Lord and God, there is neither wisdom nor charity in insisting that he shall explain what he means by these terms; nor in questioning the strength and sincerity of his faith in his Saviour; because he makes too great a distinction between the divinity of the Father, and that which he allows to be the attribute of the Son.”5Principles of Church Reform. Arnold’s Miscellaneous Works, p. 285.
It might not be amiss for the reader to ask himself what use a creed, or a Church either, can subserve, when a double sense may be knowingly put upon every word that is uttered.
In regard to the ritual of worship, Dr. Arnold considers absolute uniformity to be unnecessary and hurtful. Some persons are attached to a liturgy; others can endure none but extempore prayers; while others still have an ear for both. As his plan of reform is designed for England, his proposal is that once on the Sabbath the English service should be employed; but in the other parts of the day, the parish minister should be permitted a wide discretion. If dissenting ministers with their congregations shall be gained over to this comprehensive Church, he would have the ministers supported from the national treasury, aided if necessary, with the free-will offerings of the people. And the more completely to cement the religious associations of the nation, he would have the parish Church answer for all: the different tastes and convictions of different classes to be met by appointing different hours of service so that “the same roof which had rung at one part of the day with the rich service of a regular choir, should at another resound with the simpler but not less impressive singing of a mixed congregation.”
The only remaining difficulty is to organize a form of government equally enlarged. We say to ‘organize,’ because the idea does not seem to be entertained for a moment that the Church has a form of government prescribed by divine authority; but such a form as may “die away” when its “spirit is transfused into the more perfect body” of the State. Taking Episcopacy as the basis, Dr. Arnold’s inventive genius seeks to supple it so that it shall become flexible and elastic enough to fit every sect. In order to show the necessity for Church reform in England, a singular confession is made, valuable to us as showing the dilapidation into which the Church must fall by alliance with the State: “it has come to such a point of actual dissolution that it has been made a question what the government of the Church of England is.”6Principles of Church Reform. Arnold’s Miscellaneous Works, p. 287 The first improvement suggested is to admit to the functions of the ministry persons of every degree of education, and from the highest to the lowest class in society. The second improvement is to popularize the government by giving the laity a greater share in its administration. This latter end is gained by the suggestion of such details as these: the dioceses are to be made smaller, by contracting and multiplying them-leaving the Metropolitan Bishops alone the right to sit in Parliament; each Bishop is to be supported by a council, consisting both of clerical and lay members; dissenting ministers (with the exceptions, of course, of Romanists, Quakers and Socinians) are to be included in the establishment, and to be maintained by Easter offerings levied on all Church members; existing benifices are not to be disturbed, as they are vested rights; but all patronage must be simply recommendatory, the Bishop’s council sitting in judgment upon the candidate’s qualifications; and those who stickle for the right to choose a pastor are to be allowed its exercise. These innovations are thus summed up under heads, which we only condense: 1st, reducing the size of the dioceses; 2nd, a council of clerical and lay members cooperating with the Bishop; 3rd, the institutions of diocesan general assemblies; 4th, the admission of persons to the ministry destitute, in some cases, of a University education; 5th, the election of ministers, in certain cases, by the people, and the checking of patronage by granting the right of disallowing a presentee; 6th, Church officers, lay and clerical, as a substitute for district visiting societies. It is hard to characterize a scheme so nondescript as this; or to decide what principle of cohesion holds together the heterogeneous parts of a system which can be likened to nothing in heaven or earth, save Nebuchadnezzar’s image. We are presented with a doctrinal creed couched in such vague generalities as to define nothing, and yet allowing a double sense in the interpretation of what little it does utter. We have a ritual, which yet settles no form of worship, but comprehending the widest diversities which taste, conscience, or caprice may engender. We have finally a government, which it is impossible to class in any category known hitherto among men—a curious amalgam of Episcopacy without prelacy, of Presbytery without courts, of Independency without the brethren. The last result of all is a Church composed of members who have not a single principle in common, except it may be a fraudulent use of terms invented solely with a view to conceal differences; and a State, that endows and propagates a Christianity from which the very heart and core has been extracted—in other words, we have the nation christianized by an infidel Church.
The Essay of Mr. Noel is written upon the other side of this controversy; and he deserves to be noticed in connection with the preceding writers, if only for the profound impression which his work has produced upon the dissenting population of England at least. Mr. Noel has every advantage from position to speak with effect on the side which he has espoused. His honorable birth, the respectability of his talents, the honesty of his character, and the purity of his life during the many years in which he has been a worthy representative of the most worthy portion of the English Church, are all passports to public confidence. He has moreover attested the sincerity of his convictions upon the subject which he discusses, by the most severe and costly sacrifice to which he could well be called. To abandon a Church he had so long cherished to resign old associations and to form new, at a period of life when it is so difficult to transplant ourselves—to be exposed to the sharpest criticism of those whose cause he has cast from him—these are sacrifices, which as they call for nerve to encounter, are at least evidences of honest conviction of mind. We are not aware that anyone has ventured to impeach the purity of Mr. Noel’s motives or the sincerity of his conclusions, in his recent secession from the English Church; and we think it will be hard for the advocates of the union to silence the battery which he has opened upon the English establishment. The work is nevertheless open to the criticism passed upon it by a writer in the North British Review, that it looks at the question of a National Church too exclusively in the light in which it is presented in England; and thus the reply to far the larger portion of it is, that the evils reprehended are not essential to the idea of an established religion; but only accessory to it in the particular form in which that idea has unfortunately been realized in the English Church. This however is easily explained: although there is not a single allusion to himself in the whole book, it was written evidently with a view to justify before the British public his own secession. It is divided into two parts; the first being devoted to a consideration of the principles of the union; and the second, to its effects. Under the former of these divisions, Mr. Noel undertakes to show, in opposition to Mr. Gladstone and others, that the State is incompetent, from its very constitution, to order the affairs of a spiritual Church—that the parallel is altogether false which is run between the family and the State—that all history condemns the union as disastrous in its results—that the argument is fallacious which supports the establishment from the Mosaic law—and that neither the prophecies of the Old Testament, nor the injunctions of the New, infer the necessity of a National Church. From these more general principles Mr. Noel passes to others more in detail, and which are particularly recognized in the English establishment; aiming to show that the State’s supremacy, the maintenance of ministers from the national treasury, patronage and coercion, are all condemned by the word of God. Under the second great division of his work, Mr. Noel exhibits the practical workings of the system, in the evil influence exerted upon Bishops, Pastors, Curates, private members, and upon dissenters. As for ourselves, we were most interested in the succeeding chapter; in which are described the effects produced by the union upon the number of ministers, upon their distribution, upon their maintenance, upon the doctrine they teach, upon the discipline of the Churches, the Evangelization of the country, and the like. We feel greatly indebted to this author for the collection of his facts and for the statistical form in which he presents them, so well adapted to the comparison we design to institute. We have always suspected these things to be as Mr. Noel describes; but with his aid, we shall be able to humble the arrogance of those boastful theorizers who have assumed as a necessary truth and as a historical verity, the utter insufficiency of the voluntary principle.
In relation to the amiable author himself, who, in his trying position, has been able to disclose enormous abuses without the slightest infusion of bitterness, we confess to a particular regret when it was rumored that he was about to identify himself with one of the existing bodies of dissenters in England. It seemed to us that if his mission was to overthrow a union which was simply desecrating to the Church of Christ, that mission could be more certainly accomplished by his maintaining an independent position and becoming the nucleus of an evangelical, disestablished Episcopal Church; and we anticipated a growth for this secession of Noel, Shore, and others, not inferior to that which was attained by the secession in former years of the Erskines and Fishers from the Scottish establishment. Whether Mr. Noel is a man equal to such an enterprise, it is not necessary to inquire. The perusal of his Essay has satisfied us, that he has receded as much from Episcopacy as from the Establishment; and that the honesty of his character and the sincerity of his convictions necessitate the step which otherwise would be a matter of regret.
This article, sufficiently long to bring to a close, has assumed on the anvil a different form from that at first designed. Our purpose was to have entered at once upon the discussion of the points involved in this controversy. But as, in this country at least, it has been so long considered “res adjudicata,” and we hear so often the wonder expressed, upon what grounds it is pretended to retain and justify the alliance of Church and State, it seemed not unfit to present the historical view given above. The careful reader will perceive that very grave questions have been sprung in the preceding review: is the State a person, capable of religion? What is the end for which civil government was instituted? Cannot the Church exert an influence upon the State, as a co-ordinate institution and independently of an alliance? Is the voluntary principle insufficient, as boldly alleged, to propagate religion in a country? Does the voice of past ages cry out for a national Church, and how is this the voice of nature? Does the Jewish Theocracy afford a precedent in favor of the connection between State and Church? Do the Millenial prophecies set this union before us as a necessary feature of Christ’s universal rule upon earth? The answer to these questions must be reserved for another article, in which they may be thoroughly discussed. In the meantime, it is hoped the synopsis already given of the views of leading writers in favor of Church establishments may not prove unacceptable nor uninteresting to the reader.
