EXTRACTS FROM THE CHARGES OF

THE LATE BISHOP JAYNE

1. AURICULAR CONFESSION.

2. FASTING COMMUNION.

3. RESERVATION.

4. THE WAFER.

5. THE PRIMITIVE MODE OF CELEBRATION.

6. INCENSE.

APPENDIX

EXTRACTS from Anglican Pronouncements, edited by the Right Rev. Francis John Jayne, D.D., Bishop of Chester, 1889-1919 (Phillipson and Golder, Chester), and from the Bishop's own charges and pastoral letters.

(The late Bishop Jayne had a keen solicitude for the maintenance of Anglican principles in their integrity, and was eminently qualified by his sound scholarship and balance of mind to give guidance to others on a loyal adherence to the Via Media. In addressing the churchpeople of his diocese on such matters the Bishop's practice was to call attention as well to the formularies of the Church as to the pronouncements of representative divines. His own personal utterances were always framed with deliberate thoughtfulness and expressed in clear and cogent language, but he never cared to repeat in words of his own what had already been well said by others whose names would carry weight. The consequence is that, though in his Anglican Pronouncements we are made acquainted very explicitly with the Bishop's personal opinions, the booklet is of additional value as a repertory of declarations on Anglican doctrine by leaders of the Church from the sixteenth century down to the present day.

It was Bishop Jayne's express wish that there should be no memorial of him, and he left nothing for posthumous publication. Permission has, however, been given for the reprinting for the purposes of this volume of select portions. of his charges as well as of the booklet referred to.

The extracts are brought together under a succession of headings, the Anglican Pronouncements [under the two first headings] being preceded by the Bishop's introductory observations.)

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1. AURICULAR CONFESSION

As regards Auricular Confession in its technical, systematic, sacramental" form, which is to be found at its best and its worst in the Church of Rome, I follow Bishop Ridding, late of Southwell, when he "feels and says most strongly that there is no one of the mediaeval developments which he believes to be so deadly, both to priest and people, as the system included in the confessional." With him, too, I hold that "the evidence of history shows that the system, as tried by the mediaeval western and modern Church, has been a failure.” History constrains us to recognise "the impracticable evils of the system of private confession recorded in centuries of Councils and Popes' ordinances, and their vain attempts either to enforce it or remedy its faults. Apart from the moral dangers, which form a chief subject of those ordinances, there are other evils -unreality in particular-which are also officially recorded, and which human nature makes inherent in the secrecy and superstition of the confessional. Historical truth has been violated in the advocacy of its revival in the English Church."

With Archbishop Benson I should say, "as to the confessional-the Culture, the Philosophy, the Science, the Family Union, the Civil Progress that Christendom has brought forth, all alike exclaim :

‘In nostros fabricata est machina muros.'

Further, I believe that the system has no fair foothold whatever in the New Testament; that the texts appealed to, especially John xx. 23, are misinterpreted; that it is radically at variance with the method and spirit of our Lord and His Apostles in dealing with the souls of men and women. Το turn, for example, from Latham's Pastor Pastorum to Roman or Romanising books is to enter an essentially different moral and spiritual atmosphere.

Throughout this pamphlet there is but slight reference to the darker side of the confessional. The line taken is on that "higher ground" to which Archbishop Trench directs his clergy and others in words following the passage given by Bishop Dowden :

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In resisting the attempts to give to it [the practice of Confession] a wider scope, we only weaken our position when we dwell mainly on the abuses to which it has sometimes given

occasion. We may fitly take higher ground. Let us assume it to be conducted ever so prudently and well, with the skill and discretion which can be the portion only of a very few, yet even so it could only become the rule among us at the sacrifice of that true manliness of Christian character for which nothing else would be a compensation. We may lean on men till we have unlearned how to go alone, or rather how to lean on Him who is Man and God in one, and who only can truly support and sustain. Moreover, as it presents itself to me, the scheme is imperfect, can only be most imperfectly carried out, even on its own principles. All distinct motions of sin, embodying themselves in thought, in word, or in deed, these it might be just possible to confess-sins, that is—but sin, that dark background of evil out of which the separate sins start into life, how is it possible to fashion this in words, to utter this in any intelligible language to any other but to God, while even to Him, if I may venture on the seeming contradiction, only in groanings which cannot be uttered?”

(The quotation which follows is from a charge of Bishop Moberly. All references are given in the booklet, to which the reader may turn for fuller particulars.)

"I most thankfully believe that ever since the blessed Breath of the Lord was breathed upon the Apostles, and the sacred words of priestly delegation spoken to them, as recorded in the 20th chapter of St. John's Gospel, the Apostles as a Body, and that a Body to continue by perpetual succession even unto the very end of the world, did receive and do continue to possess the awful power then communicated to them; and I do also most thankfully believe that besides other indispensable ways in which this sacred power is to be exercised, it is effectual to the relief of the burthened conscience of individual people so that if they under the pressure of heavy distress of sin either publicly known and causing scandal, or secretly weighing down their own souls, desire to unfold their trouble to a priest, it is part of his office to assure them by authoritative sentence of the pardon of GOD in Christ, and to restore to them that access to His mercy, which was, or seemed to be barred against them.

"But two essential conditions are required in regard to the due exercise of this power: the one, that it be used as remedial only, supplementary, and restorative of the real and true access to God in Christ which is the right of every Christian who has been baptized into the Body, and so into the Sonship of his Lord; and the other that it be exercised not as of separate

and personal right and authority by the single priest, but under the orderly, recognised, and sufficient authorisation of the Church which gives to that priest his commission. The former of these conditions is based upon the undeniable fact, -undeniable alike on grounds of Scripture, and primitive Church History, that the normal and rightful position of a Christian towards GOD is one of the freest and most unimpeded filial access and address. He needs, no doubt, various acts of external ministration from men in the Church, first to put him and afterwards to help to keep him rightly and well in his estate of high Christian privilege; but in regard to his secret soul and conscience he is free to go to GOD without other mediator or help than the Holy Spirit moving him to secret confession and prayer, and to be assured that as the one Paraclete moves him and helps him to pray, so the other Paraclete by the Father's right hand presents his prayers, making them effectual by the virtue of His own propitiatory Sacrifice. And the second of these conditions is based upon the very nature and history of the power itself. It was given to a Body, not to individuals. Even at the first gift, one of the Eleven was absent, and yet we do not doubt that St. Thomas shared it not less than any other of the Apostolic company. The power is in the Body. The organs for its exercise are, no doubt, the individual priests; but it is not their own separate and independent property, to use as they think proper, and when they think proper, nor to use at all except so far as the Body which gave them commission gives them also the authority to use it, and directions for the use of it.

To

"There can be no doubt that within a few years the practice of Auricular Confession, and that, not occasional, remedial, and restorative, as I have described it, but habitual, periodical, and regular, has gained great ground in our Church. It is preached far and wide among us as a means of ordinary grace, as a necessary condition of attaining high spiritual life. such an extent is it carried that I have seen a manual, intended for the use of children, in which they are taught that they cannot be forgiven for even their childish sins without resort to the priest; though even the Lateran Council which first decreed the necessity of private confession and absolution confined it to the case of adults. It is preached as a matter of so necessary importance that neither remission of sins, nor, by consequence, fitness for Holy Communion, is to be looked for without it."