SIR ROBERT ANDERSON
Secret Service
Theologian
THE BIBLE OR THE CHURCH
CHAPTER SEVEN
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 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."' 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.
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 today in England,
have taught them the foundation lie of the apostasy, that salvation is in and
through "the Church," 4 they are easily drawn into the net, and duly make their
submission to Rome.
(Footnotes, -(2) I have myself been honoured in this
way. See Appendix II. (3)The lie is a venerable one. "Outside the Church there
is no salvation" was a favourite maxim of Cyprian.)
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 in itself 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 pointing us to the only mediator, the
Lord Jesus Christ, leaves us free to "obey the gospel."
Christianity makes
salvation a personal matter 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 the 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 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 R.V.).
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 our Lord Jesus Christ."'
Salvation therefore is not by the Church, but the Church is composed of
those who are thus saved by Christ.
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; 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."'
In these days the secular press has taken up "religion." Priests
and altars, confession and absolution, "the ornaments rubric" and "incense used
ceremonially "- these and kindred topics are freely discussed in the daily
newspapers. But no letters in the interests of Christianity appear 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.
(Footnote - 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 (Greek word) 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.)
The
following is a typical specimen of the sort of effusion above alluded to. After
referring to the charge that "a clergyman who has a High celebration with
Catholic ritual" cannot teach the doctrines of the Church of England, he
proceeds "So I used to think, but I found I was mistaken. I had never read any
theology in those days; I had only glanced at my Prayer-book; I knew nothing of
the Ornaments Rubric, the Act of Uniformity, the Tractarian movement, &c.
Consequently I bore false witness against my neighbour - 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."'
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. "Christ as a person is forgotten; the fundamental questions
of salvation are not answered by reference to Him."' 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." 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."
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";' and judging the Greek and Roman Churches by these
tests, they in express terms excluded them from the category.
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.' 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.
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 as
"the Bride" 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 unto heaven, and God hath remembered her
iniquities."
(Footnote - 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 were 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; not because there is no salvation within
the historic Church-this may not b~i 'asserted-but because the Christian has to
stand before the judgment.seat of christ. 2 Luke xi. 5o, 5i.)
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 whc have gone before them, become heirs of guilt. Thus it was that, as
the Lord Himself declared, the Israel of Messianic days guilty of "the blood of
all the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the world." 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 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."' 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.
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. Men of the world are Gallios
in all that concerns religion. Why should they take sides with one Church or
party against another? But the revival of the confessional is fitted to put an
end to this indifference. 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, is so indescribably filthy
that a pamphlet containing bare extracts from it in English, although
admittedly published and circulated with a good motive, has been condemned for
obscenity; and an enthusiast who sought thus to excite public feeling against
the system has suffered imprisonment for his offence.
"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 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.' - 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.
(Footnote - Said Archbishop Tait, 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 could suggest a method of "remonstrating" that would be
efficacious!)
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 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."' 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 film, every one that believeth is justified from all things."
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, and the record adds, -"They that were
scattered abroad went everywhere, preaching the Word." 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 history the apostles alone refrained from
entering upon it.' Priestly absolution, 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" (James v: I3-I6,
R.V.).
(Footnote - Under Divine guidance, no doubt.
While the testimony was specially addressed to Israel (that is, during the
Pentecostal dis-pensation), Jerusalem was the divinely appointed
centre.)
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 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.'
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 to the Lord for me"?
(Footnote
- "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 ,ls 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."
)
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?" 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."'
The apostles had a position of undoubted
pre-eminence 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.
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 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 Church of the Reformation, must 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.
Chapter
Eight
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