Page images
PDF
EPUB

viz. that they were the work of Apostles or could be traced back to Apostles. In point of fact no writing permanently held its place which could not in this way be guaranteed. Apostles in their view were πvɛvμaтоþóρoi, specially commissioned by Christ to be His witnesses and gifted with the Spirit for that purpose. Apostles alone could deliver a Gospel. In our view the position in which St. Luke found himself was simply this. There were in existence many detached narratives of Gospel history, drawn up by Apostles (possibly with consultation) for reading in church; and it had been felt as a desideratum that these narratives should be arranged consecutively, so as to form a connected history. Many had taken in hand to do this; and St. Luke felt that he had exceptional advantages for accomplishing the task. But his Gospel could never have been accepted had it not had distinct apostolic sanction—a fact which is attested by early tradition. Then if we consider that all these books were read in church, and that all were familiar with their contents, it is seen how impossible it is to suppose such wholesale manipulations of sacred writings as critics suppose. And especially in regard to St. John's Gospel. It never could have attained its position had it not been clear to everyone that it was the work of the Apostle.

But the system of guesswork is seen most fully in those whom the Archdeacon classes as negative critics. He has devoted considerable space to Dr. S. Davidson and his somewhat remarkable change of view; and he puts side by side the two latest critics and the discordant results at which they arrive. Then we have the following summary of the result of his enquiry:

[ocr errors]

'But the time has now arrived when this division of our subject must be brought to a conclusion. I have endeavoured in the three lectures of the Lent term to set before you "the judgment of centuries upon the Fourth Gospel, and have in the four lectures of this term tried to examine the criticism of "our age."... And now what does it all prove? Where is this destructive criticism, which is, by a definite and compact body of measured proof, to establish the fact that the convictions of all previous ages are a series of mistakes, and that "our age" has cancelled the judgment of centuries? Evanson, Bretschneider, Strauss, Baur, Hilgenfeld, Volkmar, Renan, Scholten, Keim, Davidson, and the rest-where is their collective wisdom, where the fixed results of their investigations? By what laws of evidence is a case to be supported in which almost every witness contradicts the witness on his own side who has gone before, and then contradicts himself? What is the value of that man's evidence who tells us plainly, first, that he is certain, then that he is doubtful,

then that he is doubtful about his doubts-but thinks his opinion may yet change? What verification is possible for theories which assure us now that the Gospel is the growth of unconscious myth, now the result of deliberate design; now that its roots are metaphysical, now that they are mystical; now that the work is clearly composite, now that it is absolutely one; now that the discourses are trustworthy but not the history; now that the history is trustworthy but not the discourses; now that the author is clearly a Jew, now that he is certainly a Greek; now that he is a Syrian, now that he is an Alexandrian; now that the whole teaching bears the impress of Philo, now that it is permeated by the Gnosticism of Basilides? What dependence can be placed upon investigations which assure us with equal confidence that the Gospel was written A.D. 180, 170, 160, 150, 140, 120, 110, or even far back into the first century?

'If all these clashing, contradicting, self-destroying, each-othercancelling theories of "our age" are now placed beside the calm and deliberate judgment of the second and all succeeding centuries, and with the positive judgment and knowledge of our own day, what is the effect? Is it less than to divide positive unity by a positive zero, and is not the result a positive infinity?'

1

We cannot follow the Archdeacon through the long account which he has given of writers on the other side, both in Germany and in England. Beginning with Schleiermacher, Neander, and De Wette, he passes in review a long list of writers, and winds up with our English scholarsBishop Lightfoot, Bishop Westcott, Dr. Salmon, and Dr. Sanday. Neither can we take account of the seventh lecture, which deals with the important subject of recent discoveries as bearing on St. John's Gospel. We take leave of this excellent book in the hope that it may have the effect, so much to be desired, of bringing home to men's minds the real facts connected with this difficult yet most important subject.

ART. IX.-CHURCH AND STATE UNDER THE TUDORS.

Church and State under the Tudors.

By GILBERT W. CHILD. (London, 1890.)

NEARLY half a century has elapsed since the publication of nine lectures by the Rev. P. Cooper under the title of The Anglican Church the Creature and Slave of the State. The lectures were written from a Roman point of view by an

1 Bampton Lectures, p. 409.

Irish priest of that communion, and the author made considerable use of the arbitrary mode of enforcing what was considered to be the doctrine of the royal supremacy in illustrating his subject.

Of course we had in due order the account of the 'Submission of the Clergy' in 1531 to declare the king 'the head of the Church so far as the law of Christ would allow,' followed by the Act of 1534, entitled' an Act for the Submission of the Clergy to the King's Majesty,' also the Act of Uniformity of the first year of the reign of Elizabeth, and the Act of the same year to restore to the Crown the ancient jurisdiction over the estate, ecclesiastical and spiritual, and the Act of the eighth year, which professed to give the Queen's dispensation of all difficulties as regards the election and the consecration of all bishops who had been made since the beginning of her reign.

The volume which we are now reviewing is issued with the modest title of Church and State under the Tudors, but might more appropriately have been styled, as Mr. Cooper's work was, The Anglican Church the Creature and Slave of the State, for to represent it as such appears to be the whole object of Mr. Child's publication. He does not, indeed, write from a Roman point of view, neither does he indulge in the sneers against Anglicanism or in the contemptuous tone which characterize that work, the author of which speaks of it as 'being a refutation of certain Puseyite claims advanced on behalf of the Established Church.' And indeed there is nothing to show from what point of view Mr. Child does write; neither are we able to describe him from anything that appears in this volume as a Churchman or a Nonconformist. He professes to write from the unprejudiced view of one who has studied both old and recent works on English Church history, and to hold the balance between the two accounts, of which he says, and we think without much exaggeration, that 'the change of view in the new as compared with the older books is often so great that it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that in the popular delineations of the subject the lights and shadows seem almost to have changed places within the memory of living men' (p. vi). But though he professes to write with the utmost impartiality we see on his very first page what we are to expect in his adoption of the term 'the Reformation settlement;' and so we join issue with him at once on the ground that there is no such thing as a 'Reformation settlement,' the changes which began in the reign of Henry VIII., and were continued during the reign of

his successor, reversed in the reign of Philip and Mary, and again adopted by Elizabeth, followed by the altered state of things which gradually came over the Church during the reigns of James I. and Charles I., culminating in the settlement that was made upon the return of Charles II., allowing of no period which can be fixed upon for such a term during any part of the time intervening between 1530 and 1660.

There was certainly a settlement when the Act of Uniformity was passed and the Prayer Book of 1662 was issued, and that settlement has remained with scarcely any change worth noticing to the present day.

And if this be so it will be to no purpose to quote any arbitrary acts of the preceding century as affording any precedent for the Church of this day. Mr. Child has undoubtedly heard of the sentiment implied in the words 'the recovery from the principles of the Reformation,' and, unless it can be shown that the royal supremacy must of necessity exhibit itself in the way in which it was exerted in the reign of Elizabeth, it cannot be argued that there is no proper use and understanding of the doctrine. And surely the Church of England has a right to plead that in the very Acts themselves the claim of supremacy is worded 'for the restoring and uniting to the Imperial Crown of this realm the ancient jurisdictions, authorities, superiorities, and pre-eminences to the same of right belonging or appertaining.' If, that is to say, the royal supremacy has been abused, that is no argument that it will always continue to be so abused. Yet unless this is so the whole argument of Mr. Child's book falls to the ground, for though his work is for the most part confined to historical facts, it is impossible not to see that his whole view of the case is that the Church of England, from the time of its separation from the rest of the Western Church, is quite a different thing from what it was in the reign of Henry VII.

Accordingly we are not surprised to find that the Introduction, which occupies the first two chapters, contains an elaborate attempt to represent the Church of this country, from the earliest period down to the reign of Henry VIII., in most marked contrast with its history from that time forwards. Neither have we any special fault to find with him except for the conclusion which he evidently means to be drawn from the facts which he narrates. If he has somewhat exaggerated the devotion of English Churchmen to the Holy See, and perhaps made little account of Statutes of Provisors and Præmunire, he has, upon the whole, honestly represented

the true state of affairs, which we do not mean to gainsay— that the National Church was an obedient child of the Roman See. For the earliest known relations of Church and State the author is content to follow as his guide the Appendices by the present Bishop of Oxford, annexed to the Report of the Commissioners appointed to enquire into the Constitution and Working of the Ecclesiastical Courts. Quoting the Report itself (p. xviii), he speaks of the Norman Conquest as 'having placed the English Church in closer connexion with the Churches of the Continent, introduced a new school of ecclesiastical administrators, and coincided in time with a revival of the study of civil and canon law.' And here he makes a point towards the establishment of the contrast we have been speaking of, viz. that as the Western Church was, until the so-called Reformation, one and indivisible, and had an existence prior to that of the nations of modern Europe, the Church which is now spoken of as the National Church could in no intelligible sense be then called National. We do not care to quarrel with him about the term, nor, again, with his denial that it could properly be called the Church of England; only we demur to the distinction being pressed so far as to imply that the National Church of this day may not also be called the Church in England, there being no other body that so much as claims to have a succession of bishops who have held the sees all through the troublous times of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As for the rest of the two introductory chapters, the struggles between the popes and the kings, and the alternations of ascendency of the royal and papal powers, are well and interestingly described.

The real business of the work begins with Chap. III., and consists of a tolerably fair and accurate description of the state of the Church during the reigns of Henry, Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth, the latter reign having, as might be expected, the lion's share of the volume.

If we could abstract from the volume the animus which manifestly pervades the whole of it we should describe Mr. Child's work as a very useful and, upon the whole, fair account of the progress of things during the reigns of Henry VIII. and Edward VI., as well as that of Elizabeth. The facts are carefully stated, and, we have no doubt, amply satisfy the writer as to the conclusion which he draws from them, viz. that the Church of this country as it existed prior to what is designated the Reformation settlement, and as it exists at the present day, are two entirely distinct bodies. We of course entirely demur to this conclusion, and are pre

« PreviousContinue »