CHAPTER
8
(The
Bible or the Church?, Chapter 7, pp. 90-109)
109
IN the Church's name! "Great is Diana of the Ephesians." The only sacred
thing on earth is "the Church." As for Holy Scripture, that may
be patronised or mangled at pleasure: the dissecting knife of criticism
cannot be applied to it too remorselessly. But to question the Divine
authority of "the Church" is profanity beyond forgiveness. Just as in
Pagan Rome men were free to believe in anything or in nothing, as it
pleased them, so long as they were willing to burn incense at the appointed
shrine, so is it in "Christian" England. There is but one God and "the
Church" is His prophet.
"In the
Church's name!" With these men "the Church" is the one mediator between
God and men. No, they will exclaim, not the Church
110
but Christ; the mediator is Christ, speaking in and through the Church.
How plainly and fully the Divine Spirit anticipated this plausible falsehood
when He inspired the words: "There is one God and one mediator between
God and men, THE MAN Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all."[1]
Not the Church, not Christ in the Church, not the "mystical Christ;"
but Christ THE MAN who died for men; HE is the only mediator between
men and God.
[1]
1 Tim ii. 5, 6.
Society
is occasionally startled by some notable secession to Rome; and the
inference is a natural one that if "men of light and leading" take a
step so momentous there cannot but be the most cogent reasons in its
favour. As a matter of fact every one of these perverts has been angled
for individually,[2] and the
bait by which they have all been tempted is "the Church."[3]
As the champions of the Neo-Romanism, so popular to-day in England,
have taught them the foundation lie of the apostasy, that salvation
is in and through "the
111
Church,"[4] they are easily
drawn into the net, and duly make their submission to Rome.
[2]
I have myself been honoured in this way. See Appendix
II, post.
[3]
See Appendix IV., Note
3, post.
[4]
The lie is a venerable one. "Outside the Church there is no salvation"
was a favourite maxim of Cyprian's.
The great
Orthodox Church being ignored, this result is inevitable. A simple process
of negative induction leads to it. For the position claimed by the ritualists
for the Church of England is obviously that of a schismatical sect,
severed from and repudiated by that Church to which it owes everything
which they deem vital; and Protestantism regarded as a religion
is rightly rejected as a transparent fraud. It was a common saying in
the days of the Council of Trent that the Bible was the religion
of Protestants. Protestantism affords no anchorage for faith. But it
provides a breakwater which makes our anchorage secure: it shields us
from influences which make Christianity impossible. While priestcraft
would set up a Church to mediate between God and man, Protestantism
places in our hands an open Bible, and thus points us to the only mediator,
the Lord Jesus Christ, and leaves us free to "obey the gospel."
Christianity
makes salvation a personal matter
112
between the sinner and God. It is not a question of subjection to ordinances
of religion, but of personal submission to the Lord Jesus Christ. The
contrast is presented in the most emphatic way in the great doctrinal
treatise of the New Testament. At the close of his parting charge to
Israel, Moses spoke as follows:—
"For this
commandment which I command thee this day, it is not hidden from thee,
neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that thou shouldest say,
Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us, that we may
hear it, and do it? Neither is it beyond the sea, that thou shouldest
say, Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it unto us, that
we may hear it, and do it? But the word is very nigh unto thee, in
thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it" (Deut. xxx. 11-14).
And now,
mark how the inspired apostle uses these words. Addressing the Romans,
he says:—
"For Moses
writeth that the man that doeth the righteousness which is of the
law shall live thereby. But the righteousness which is of faith saith
thus, Say not in thy heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is,
to bring Christ down:) or, Who shall descend into the abyss? (that
is, to bring Christ up from the dead.) But what saith it? The word
is nigh thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of
faith, which we preach: because if thou shalt
113
confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thy heart
that God raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved" (Rom. x. 5-9).
According
to the Divine revelation of Judaism, the way of life was obedience to
ordinances: according to the Divine revelation of grace in Christianity,
it is faith in Christ, and the acknowledgment of Him as Lord. And thus
the apostle adds, "For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness;
and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation... For whosoever
shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved." And the inspired
definition of the Church is, "All that in every place call upon the
name of the Lord Jesus Christ."[5]
Salvation therefore is not by the Church, but the Church is composed
of those who are thus saved by Christ.
[5]
1 Cor. i. 2.
But
this is mere Christianity, and what men crave for is a religion.
For their "affairs" they have a lawyer; for their bodies, a doctor;
and for their souls they want a priest. Christianity is Divine and therefore,
as men deem it, supernatural and visionary;
114
whereas religion is human and natural, and therefore practical.
Here, and
throughout these pages, the word "religion" is used in its proper classical
meaning—the only meaning in which it is used in our English Bible.
"How little 'religion' once meant godliness," says Archbishop Trench,
"how predominantly it was used for the outward service of God, is plain
from many passages in our homilies and from other contemporary literature."
So Thomas Carlyle writes that, "In Scotland, Dr. Laud, much to his regret,
found 'no religion at all,' no surplices, no altars in the east or anywhere;
no bowing, no responding; not the smallest regularity of fuglemanship
or devotional drill exercise; in short, 'no religion at all that I could
see—which grieved me much.'" [6]
[6]
Carlyle's "Cromwell's Letters and Speeches" (Introduction). Archbishop
Laud was an authority upon religion, but not upon Christianity.
For the Christian, "pure religion" (the Apostle James declares) "is
to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep
himself unspotted in the world." And in commenting on this, Archbishop
Trench remarks that the very qhreskeiva
of Christianity "consists in acts of mercy, of love, of holiness." In
other words, Christianity is not a religion at all. (See "The Silence
of God," pp. 43-45, and Note II. of the Appendix.)
115
The secular press has
taken up "religion" of late. Priests and altars, confession
and absolution, "the ornaments rubric" and incense used ceremonially"—these
and kindred topics have been freely discussed in the daily newspapers.
But no letters in the interests of Christianity have appeared
in their columns. Letters of that kind gravitate to the waste-paper
basket, while every one has been free to air his faith in the superstitions
of human religion—superstitions which, formerly, the manhood of
Christendom, especially in Roman Catholic countries, treated with cynical
contempt.
It cannot
seem trivial to insert here a typical specimen of the sort of effusion
above alluded to. It is taken at random from The Times.[7]
The writer is the minister of a fashionable church in the West-end of
London. After referring to the statement of a previous correspondent,
that "a clergyman who has a High celebration with Catholic ritual" cannot
teach the doctrines of the Church of England, he proceeds as follows:—
"So
I used to think, but I found I was mistaken. I had never read any
theology in those days I had only glanced
116
at my Prayer-book; I knew nothing of the Ornaments Rubric, the Act
of Uniformity, the Tractarian movement, etc. Consequently I bore false
witness against my neighbours—viz., the ritualistic clergy.
But when God revealed the truth to me and I understood what conversion
meant, and what the Incarnation, the Catholic Church the Eucharistic
Sacrifice, the Real Presence, Confession and Absolution, and all the
rest meant, then a new light dawned on my soul and I found a beautiful
peace in the Church of England. Then I saw that what looked to me
in my ignorance to be idolatry, formalism, treachery, was really love
of Jesus, faith in God's promises, and loyalty to the Church of England
as part of the one true Church."
[7]
[The Times,] Nov. 26, 1898. [The writer is the Rev. Hon. James
Adderly. His letter was in reply to one from Lady Wimborne.]
It is not
easy to gauge the spiritual, or even the intellectual condition of men
who in presence of the awful solemnities of "sin and righteousness and
judgment to come" can find "a beautiful peace" through the study of
the ornaments rubric and the Act of Uniformity. Were it not indeed for
the solemnity of the subject, it would be exquisitely amusing. But it
is too serious and too sad for ridicule. Of course ecclesiastical doctrines
and practices may be discussed in a cold and formal way, without reference
to experience. But here the writer discloses his own spiritual history
and the ground of his soul's peace. And yet there is not a word about
Christ and His atoning sacrifice.
117
"Christ as a person is forgotten; the fundamental questions of salvation
are not answered by reference to Him."[8]
Instead of Calvary we have the "Eucharistic sacrifice" of the mass,
that the Church of which the writer is a paid servant describes as a
"blasphemous fable."[9] A discussion
of the many questions here raised would fill a volume; but let us seize
upon this vital error of "the one true Church," "the Catholic Church."
[8]
P. 99, ante.
[9]
Article xxxi.
The
haughty isolation, the dignified reserve, of the Greek Church is well
fitted to impress the imagination, as is also the lofty intolerance
of Rome. We know what "the Church" means with them, and we know
what the Reformers meant by it. But what is "the one true Church" of
these Neo-Romanists? Not the company of "all that call upon the name
of our Lord Jesus Christ," but the aggregate of the Episcopal
communities, including that Church which rejects their fellowship with
such disdain. The Reformers defined the Church as "a congregation of
faithful men in the which the pure Word of God is preached, and the
sacraments be duly administered;"[10]
and
118
judging the Greek and Roman Churches by these tests, they in express
terms excluded them from the category.[11]
Mark what this implies. Prior to the Reformation, the English Church
was but a branch of the Church of Rome; but the Reformers openly seceded
from the Roman Communion; and in doing so they expressly repudiated
its claims to be a true Church at all, and denounced its most characteristic
ordinances as "blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits." But the Reformers
were not so narrow-minded and silly as to imagine that there was no
Church on earth save in the southern half of this little island of Britain.
Rome limits the Church to those who are within her pale; but they, refusing
the place of a mere sect, which is the position occupied by the Neo-Romanists
to-day, so defined the Church as to include all Christians everywhere
who took their stand with them upon the truth and practice of primitive
Christianity.[12]
[10]
Article xix.
[11]
Article xix.
[12]
Their language is very noteworthy—"A (i.e., any) congregation
of faithful men," etc. And the 55th canon is still more explicit: "The
whole congregation of Christian people dispersed throughout the whole
world" (see Appendix IV,
Note 3, post.).
119
The Church founded by Augustine of Canterbury was not the Church of
England, but a branch of the Church of Rome in England. Pope
Gregory's mission corrupted and eventually stamped out, so far as the
southern kingdom was concerned, the purer Christianity of the ancient
Church of Britain—a Church founded in apostolic times by apostolic
emissaries, if not by the Apostle Paul himself. Was the Reformation
then no more than a surface cleaning of the English branch of the apostate
Church, or was it a repudiation of that evil system, and a return to
the purer faith of earlier days?
Great issues
depend upon the answer given to this question. The time foretold in
prophecy is not yet, when there can be no salvation within the professing
Church of Christendom. Not until the earthly people shall have been
restored to favour... [Ed.]
will the Church of Christendom be openly revealed as "the Harlot." And
then the command will be peremptory: "Come out of her, my people, that
ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.
For her sins have reached even
120
unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities."[13]
[Ed.]
We have omitted, "as the Bride," a result of Bullinger's influence
on Anderson. We believe that the Church, not Israel, is the Bride of
the Lamb—see Hamilton
Smith, The Bride of the Lamb.
[13]
Rev. xviii. 4, 5. I would not be understood as palliating the sin of
remaining in the communion of an apostate Church. And if the Church
of England be a branch of the Catholic Church, in the sense in which
the Romanisers use that term, no Christian should remain in it for
a single day; nor because there is no salvation within the historic
Church—this
may not be asserted—but
because the Christian has to stand before the judgment-seat of Christ.
For Divine
judgments are cumulative. He is "a jealous God, visiting the iniquity
of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation
of them that hate Him." It is not that the innocent suffer for the guilty,
but that succeeding generations of God-haters, by identifying themselves
with the sin of those who have gone before them, become heirs of their
guilt. The Israel of Messianic days, by the murder of the Son of God,
became guilty of "the blood of all the prophets, which was shed from
the foundation of the world."[14]
And by her own deliberate acts the "historic Church" entered upon the
awful heritage of guilt; and when, at the close of this day of grace,
her sins shall come up for judgment, upon her shall be avenged His holy
121
apostles and prophets, for "in her," we read, "was found the blood of
prophets and of saints, even of all that have been slain upon the earth."[15]
[14]
Luke xi. 50, 51.
[15]
Rev. xviii. 20, 24.
The Churches of
the Reformation sought to "break the entail" of guilt, but these Neo-Romanists
are determined, so far as in them lies, to restore it. Upon every man
who stands upon "the continuity of the historic Church," "the blood
of the martyrs" calls aloud for vengeance.[16]
The question here involved is the pivot on which the pending controversy
turns. The ritualist regards the Reformation as merely an incidental
episode in the Church's history, and the Thirty-nine Articles as a passing
ebullition of Protestant ignorance and bigotry. Therefore he practically
ignores both. Therefore it is that he dreads the jurisdiction of the
ordinary tribunals, knowing well that every lawyer will regard the Reformation
and the Articles as vital. The Articles are the Church's confession
of faith, framed after the Prayer-book was compiled; and therefore the
Prayer-book must be interpreted by the Articles, not the Articles by
the Prayer-book.
[16]
Rev. xvii. 6.
122
Men of the world are Gallios in all that concerns religion. Why should
they take sides with this Church against that—with one party against
another? But the revival of the confessional is putting an end to this
indifference. There is no type of insanity more dangerous than that
of the poor religious maniac who hears what he believes to be a Divine
voice. To-day he will lavish affection upon wife and children; to-morrow,
in obedience to the voice, he will hack them in pieces. And the man
who hears "the voice of the Church" is just as dangerous. True he can
no longer, as in dark days gone by, set up the rack, or rekindle the
fires of the stake; but he can inflict outrages which true manhood feels
more keenly even than physical pain. Men are beginning to understand
that the question here at issue is one which touches all that is most
precious and sacred in private and family life. And the more fully this
is realised, the stronger will be the tide of popular indignation.
The standard
theological treatise prepared for the guidance of priests in questioning
penitents in the confessional, and actually used for this purpose
123
are so indescribably filthy that a pamphlet containing bare extracts
from them in English, although admittedly published and circulated with
a good motive, has been condemned for obscenity;[17]
and an enthusiast who sought thus to excite public feeling against the
system has suffered imprisonment for his offence.
[17]
See Appendix IV., Note
4, post.
Silly women
have been writing to the newspapers to assert that they have frequented
the confessional without being plied with indecent questions. But the
questioning will come by and by. As yet this abomination is only in
its infancy in England. A baby tiger is said to be a charming pet for
children, but yet no sensible man will have a baby tiger in his home.
Not one of these women, moreover, has told us what she said to her
confessor.
"If in these
days," says Froude, "the Church of Rome were to persuade any secular
power to burn a single heretic for it—as in past centuries it
burned thousands—I suppose the whole system would at once be torn
to atoms." And if some English gentleman should be sent to gaol for
horsewhipping
124
a "priest" who has received his wife's confession in matters relating
to the secret confidences of married life, the event would do more than
the bishops are likely to effect to put down this iniquity in the land.[18]
[18]
Said [Archbishop Tate] the Archbishop of Canterbury, when speaking on
this subject in the House of Lords on 14th June, 1877, "I am sure it
would be the duty of any father of a family to remonstrate with the
clergyman who had put the questions, and warn him never to approach
his house again." I mean nothing more than this, save that I suggest
a method of "remonstrating" that would be efficacious!
Confession
to a man is an outrage upon men; hence the popular clamour against the
infamy of it. Absolution by a man is a far greater outrage upon God;
but of this men seem to be unmindful. And yet there is in it something
appallingly profane. It belongs to the Pagan conception of priesthood,
by which the primitive Church was so soon corrupted. The Jew knew nothing
of it. Even in the days of his deepest apostasy, he never forgot that
the forgiveness of sins is a Divine prerogative. And no great knowledge
of Scripture is needed to satisfy any one that the apostles themselves
never claimed the power to which these priests of Christendom so impiously
pretend. To
125
point sinners to the Lord Jesus Christ was the aim of all their ministry.
"To Him give all the prophets witness, that through His
name, whosoever believeth in Him shall receive remission of sins."[19]
Such was the Apostle Peter's testimony. And the Apostle Paul's was to
the same effect: "Through Him is proclaimed unto you remission
of sins; and by Him, every one that believeth is justified from
all things."[20]
[19]
Acts x. 43.
[20]
Acts xiii. 38. The words are di;av touvtou:
literally "through this one." The introduction of the word man
in our English translations is unfortunate.
There was
nothing distinctively apostolic about this. To give such a testimony
to Christ is the privilege of every Christian. Indeed, until ecclesiasticism
corrupted Christianity it was plainly recognised as his responsibility.
In the persecution which followed the martyrdom of Stephen, the Christians,
we are told, were all scattered abroad, except the apostles;
and the record adds, "They that were scattered abroad went everywhere,
preaching the word."[21] That
is to say, not only was missionary work of this kind not "an apostolic
function," but at that particular stage of the Church's
126
history the apostles alone refrained from entering upon it.[22]
[21]
Acts viii. 4.
[22]
Under Divine guidance, no doubt. While the testimony was specially addressed
to Israel (that is, during the Pentecostal dispensation), Jerusalem
was the divinely appointed centre.
Auricular
confession, like Papal supremacy, depends on the perversion of a single
text. The precept, "Confess your sins one to another," is the only Scripture
to which it can appeal. Here is the passage in full:—
"Is any
among you suffering? let him pray. Is any cheerful let him sing praise.
Is any among you sick? let him call for the elders of the church;
and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of
the Lord: and the prayer of faith shall save him that is sick, and
the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, it shall
be forgiven him. Confess therefore your sins one to another, and pray
one for another, that ye may be healed. The supplication of a righteous
man availeth much in its working" (Jas. v. 13-16, R.V.).
If men did
not take leave of reason and common sense in all that concerns religion,
could any one find priestly absolution here? "Confess your sins one
to another," means, forsooth, "confess your sins to a priest;
and "pray for one another," means, "and the priest will absolve you!"
Forgiveness
127
is with God; and if the weak would invoke human aid, that aid will be
found in "the supplication of a righteous man," or (as the Reformers
suggested) the counsel of a "minister of God's word," who, "by the ministry
of God's holy word," may be able to quiet the conscience of the penitent.[23]
[23]
"The ever memorable Mr. John Hales, of Eaton," an Oxford Professor in
his day, and altogether a notable person—he
got preferment from Laud—wrote
as follows: "Your Pliny tells you 'that he that is stricken by a scorpion,
if he go immediately and whisper it into the ears of an ass, shall find
himself immediately eased.' That sin is a scorpion and bites deadly,
I have always believed; but that to cure the bite of it, it was a sovereign
remedy to whisper it into the ear of a priest, I do as well believe
as I do that of Pliny."
If the Apostle
Peter had known of the power to prescribe a penance, and to absolve
the penitent, would he have said to Simon Magus, "Pray God, if perhaps
the thought of thy heart may be forgiven thee"? If Simon had ever heard
of it, would he have replied, "Pray ye the Lord for me?"[24]
[24]
Acts viii. 22-24.
Paul alone
of all the apostles, compelled by the attacks of the Judaisers, "magnified
his office," insisting upon the dignity and power which pertained to
the apostleship. Yet he it was who wrote, "What then is Apollos? and
what is Paul?"[25]
128
And the answer is—not "Priests to stand between you and God,"
but "Ministers by whom ye believed." The same might have been said of
any one of the thousands of the scattered Pentecostal Church. And he
further emphasises this by declaring, "In nothing am I behind the very
chiefest apostles, though I be nothing."[26]
[25]
1 Cor. iii. 5, R.V.
[26]
2 Cor. xii. 11.
The apostles
had a position of undoubted preeminence and power in the Church—a
position absolutely unique, though these sham priests pretend to share
it; and yet so far as the remission of a sinner's sins was concerned,
an apostle was no more than the humblest Christian. At this point man
is absolutely nothing, and his intervention is indeed the sin of Korah—a
sin compared with which the foulest immorality ever disclosed in the
confessional is trivial. If such an outrage upon the Divine Majesty
does not bring down swift and signal vengeance, it is because this is
the age of a silent Heaven, the age of the reign of grace. Its punishment
awaits the awful day when the priest and his dupe shall stand together
before the throne of God.
129
But while, as already noticed, the question in this aspect of it is
altogether a religious one, it has another side, in which it closely
concerns the national character and the future of this realm. "It is
yours, Right Reverend Fathers," said Cardinal Manning in addressing
the English Roman Catholic prelates, "to subjugate and to subdue, to
bend and to break the will of an imperious race, the will which, as
the will of Rome of old, rules over nations and people, invincible and
inflexible." And no method can be more certain of achieving this fell
purpose of humiliating the spirit of Englishmen than that of habituating
them to the degradation of confession to a priest. The ritualistic controversy
abounds in questions respecting which wide differences of opinion must
be tolerated in a Church which claims to be national. But here no toleration
is possible.
Persecution?
Yes, if needs be—persecution of the kind that sends men to gaol
for fraud, or for dispensing poisons without a label. Let these men
join the Church of Rome, and they can follow the practices of their
religion unhindered. But the salaried servants of the National Church,
the
130
Church of the Reformation, shall not be permitted to destroy the work
of the Reformation. If the bishops will not, and the courts cannot,
put down this abomination, the constituencies must deal with it. God
forbid that the appeal should need to be carried further. But our liberties
have been won at the cost of revolution, and we are prepared to maintain
them, let the further cost be what it may.
*
* *
The
preceding chapter was taken from:
THE BUDDHA OF CHRISTENDOM (revised and republished in 1908 as
The Bible or the Church?) by Sir Robert Anderson.
Published by Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1899, no copyright.
The Buddha of Christendom, Chapter 9 / Bible
or Church?, Ch 8
|
