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CHARGE



DELIVERED IN



ST. MICHAEL'S CATHEDRAL, BRIDGETOWN,
BARBADOS,



BY THE RIGHT REV.



JOHN MITCHINSON, D.C.L., D.D.

BISHOP OF BARBADOS AND THE WINDWARD ISLANDS ;

FELLOW OF PEMBROKE COLLEGE, OXFORD ;

HONORARY CANON OF CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL ;



<3Vt his g&cmib DisiMioit of his prrccse,

ON

THE FESTIVAL OF ST. JOHN THE EVANGELIST, 1878,
Being tfjc Stxtfj gear of jjte Consecration,






From the Author.



©rforfc attfr Jtatowt:

JAMES PARKER AND CO.

1S79.



SUMMARY OF CONTENTS.



Apology for a quinquennial Visitation.

The events of the period in the World and the Church.

The Eastern War, and the attitude of the English Clergy.

The New Court, and its failure.

The Ridsdale Judgment : even if faulty, entitled to obedience.

The Confession agitation : Confraternities : the true position of
Confession in the Anglican System.

The growth, wide-spread and aggressive intolerance of unbelief.

Study of recent evidential literature its best antidote, and sound
and clear dogmatic teaching its best prophylactic to the
young. — Scientific and philosophic hypotheses not to be
taken for proved facts on authority.

Necessity of study, and suspended judgment on Church con-
troversies of the day, e.g. Inspiration and Eschatology.

Approximation to the Anglican Obedience of bodies yearning for
reform in France and Spain, as well as Old Catholics, Ar-
menians, and other Eastern Christians. — Bolder and sounder
attitude of the American Church towards Haiti and Mexico.
— Divergence from the English Church of Nonconformists,
especially Wesleyans : possibility of re-union on the basis
of mutual independence of system, but defect of orders
remedied. — Analogy of Friars in the Mediaeval Church.

The Lambeth Conference: non-publication of debates. — The
questions of the Barbados Church Council, how brought be-
fore the Conference : replies of the Conference on the Pro-
vince of the West Indies, the extension of the Diaconate,
and Moravian Inter-communion. — Second Conference of
West Indian Bishops, and their advice. — Proposed Co-adju-
torship to the Bishop of Antigua.

Events in Barbados. — The troubles of 1876. — Fruitless attempt
at general re-consideration of methods, rectified by ruri-
decanal meetings of clergy. — Re-construction and division
of the old collapsed Diocese of Barbados. — Changes in
the clergy-staff of Barbados. — Principle of administration
of patronage defended.

B 2



iv SUMMARY OF CONTENTS.

Church legislation during the period. — The public Cemetery. —
Experience as Cemetery Chaplain of Burial scandals. —
Need of changes in Burial Service. — Marriage : civil mar-
riage advocated, and relaxation of legal and of rubrical
obligations. — Confirmations : suggestions as to attire and
knowledge of Candidates. — The Eucharist : distribution of
Elements ; change of formula advocated.

Education. — Affiliation of Codrington College to Durham. — The
Education Act. — The Mission-house. — Examination of Chil-
dren in religious knowledge. — Public Elementary School-
teachers' Association.

Failure of the project of a new Cathedral for Barbados. — Sugges-
tions as to the legal adjustment of Cathedral and Parochial
rights and duties.

The Cathedral becoming a centre of Diocesan life. — Improve-
ment of Churches and Services throughout the Diocese.

Religious Statistics, as gathered from Clergy replies. — Low tone
of morality. — Religious apathy. — The Laity stand aloof from
Church-work. — Conclusion.



U1UC ;



Jt Charge, &t.



NEARLY five years have elapsed since I last formally-
visited my Diocese, and addressed you in the
Charge which usually accompanies such periodic inspec-
tions, though you have had many opportunities since my
Primary Charge of learning my sentiments on the passing
topics of Church interest, in the form of Addresses to my
Church Council, and in Pastoral Letters to you from time
to time.

Five years exceeds the interval canonically fixed for
episcopal visitations. It could not well, however, in this
instance have been otherwise ; for one of those years,
1876, has by tacit consent in Barbados been suffered to
drop out of the calendar of Church-work, while for six
months of 1878 I have myself been absent from my
Diocese.

They have been five eventful years both to the world
and to the Church. . This is not the time or place to
speak of that sanguinary war which, by its hardly pa-
ralleled atrocities, perpetrated on both sides with a fiendish
rivalry in savagery, has imprinted an indelible bar-sinis-
ter on the escutcheon of modern European civilization.
Suffice it to remark on this, that since the thirty years'
war, which was in its character essentially a religious war,
no war in modern times has so entirely reproduced the
phenomena, and kindled the impetuous passions of the
Crusades, whether in the combatants or in the on-lookers.
It has been astonishing and painful to note how a large
section of the English clergy, comprising great and justly-
honoured names, blinded, as it would seem, by strong
pseudo-Christian sympathies with one of the combatants,
forgot that attitude of self-continence in matters political,
which best beseems the officers of a kingdom not of this



6 A Charge delivered at

world ; and, most improperly in my judgment, endea-
voured to control and overrule the foreign policy of
the responsible Ministers of our Sovereign ; emulating
thereby that attitude, so justly censured, of the Roman
Catholic hierarchy in Ireland, (but more excusable in
them, as being avowedly an Imperium in Imperio,) of
constant and arbitrary interference in the general politics
of the nation. Nothing, surely, is more calculated to bring
the Church into discredit, and to give reality to the foolish
bugbear of " clericalism," than this attempt at usurpation
on the part of the clergy of functions and an influence
not legitimately their own.

These five years will be memorable in the history of
our Church at large for the culmination of the growth
of ultra-ritualism, and for the energetic, though, as it
would seem, abortive attempt made by the bishops and
the legislature to repress it. That attempt took form in
the Public Worship Regulation Act, which was passed
with such singular unanimity of political parties, and the
creation of the new Court, which was attempted to be
floated into general confidence by sailing under the colours
of the ancient Provincial Courts of Canterbury and York.
Rightly or wrongly, the Court has failed to obtain the
confidence, or anything like the cordial acquiescence, of
many even of those whose excesses would not bring them
within the scope of its jurisdiction. And though we may
deplore this, and feel that some coercive authority must
be recognized as final and entitled to prompt submission,
we cannot entirely marvel at it, bearing in mind the
jealousy which all Churchmen, whether lay or clerical,
naturally and properly feel at any encroachment, whether
real or apparent, on the part of Caesar on the things of
God, and any attempt to abridge or alienate those powers
of jurisdiction and correction, which they deem to be the
inalienable duty and prerogative of the spiritual power.
It was certainly to be regretted that the Act in question
was passed so entirely without concert or consultation
with the spiritualty, even without eliciting any formal
expression of opinion from that body which claims to



Bridgetown, Barbados. 7

represent the order chiefly concerned. For, I suppose,
none of us bishops are weak enough to believe that we
are regarded by our brethren of the other orders of the
clergy as in any sense their mouth-piece or their repre-
sentatives.

The Court, however, has entirely failed to restrain the
admitted evil of clerical lawlessness ; and, whether from
the novelty of its procedure, unregulated as it is thus
far by usage and precedent, or from other causes, has
hitherto effected little but miscarriage of justice, and
collision with other jurisdictions.

Another most important event of the period has been
the Ridsdale Judgment, which was looked forward to
with eager anxiety, as a deliberate and final revision of
the Purchas Judgment, which was felt to be incomplete
and unsatisfactory, as having been given in an unde-
fended suit.

This Judgment, as you well know, had for its scope
the settlement of the ritual of the Eucharist. Its two
main points of general interest were the prohibition of
what are called the Eucharistic vestments, and the virtual
recognition of the Eastward position at consecration of
the elements as legal. Probably, this was substantially
the settlement of the long-vexed question which most
moderate men, uncommitted to the exaggerated intoler-
ance of either party, would have desiderated, as an equit-
able compromise, at once securing to the Sacrament its
due meed of reverence, and yet clearly differencing it
from the Roman Mass. And yet we may reasonably
regret that this Eastward position, which seems so per-
missible a construction (to say the least of it) of the
rubric before the Consecration Prayer, should have been
legalized in what many may deem an ungracious and
left-handed way, leaving it virtually open to unsettle-
ment in any parish where an aggrieved parishioner (or,
more probably, non-parishioner) may complain that he
fails to see the manual acts, (as though these were in
any sense essential to the due consecration of the ele-
ments). We may regret, too, that the prohibition of



8 A Charge delivered at

vestments is made to depend on the interpretation and
virtual abrogation of the Ornaments' Rubric (which, you
will remember, was re-cast and adopted as part of the
statute-law of the land, by King, Lords, and Commons,
at the last revision), by what must always grate harshly
on constitutional ears, an injunction of a Tudor Sovereign.

All this is ground for legitimate regret ; matter for
free discussion, for free criticism ; for in a free country and
in a free church, just as we refuse to recognize infallible
authority in any ecclesiastical person or synod, so we
refuse to credit any tribunal, however august, with free-
dom from error and perchance unconscious prejudice.
Criticism, I say, is natural, lawful, even wholesome, so
it overstep not the limits of criticism, and demean itself
by imputing corrupt motives. More than this, it is the
indefeasible right of the defeated party to seek by all
constitutional means a rectification of the law which has
been interpreted to their disadvantage ; to move Convo-
cation and Parliament to relax restrictions, or to re-cast
in their interest and render clearer rubrics, the plain sense
of which they may deem to have been obscured by judi-
cial decisions. But nothing, in my judgment, can excuse
disobedience to the law as laid down by the highest court
of the Church and realm. Its decisions may be unsound,
may be unjust in the opinion of those whom they affect:
still, they are the final award of the final court, which, ac-
cording to the present settlement of Church and State in
England, has the right finally to decide controversies ; and,
reasonable or unreasonable, they ought to be promptly,
literally, and loyally obeyed. There are, of course, occa-
sions when resistance to the powers that be is a matter
of moral and religious obligation ; but it behoves all who
take upon themselves this most grave responsibility, to
be fully persuaded in their own mind that morality and
religion demand and justify an attitude which is, on the
face of it, so manifestly repugnant to the Word of God.

Among the other incidents of the period we must reckon
the outburst of popular indignation which assailed the
Society of the Holy Cross, when that most ill-judged



Bridgetown, Barbados. 9

and mischievous Manual of Confession, which had the
sanction of their authority, was brought by Lord Redes-
dale before the notice of Parliament. May I be permitted
to express my doubts, in passing, whether such confra-
ternities are either expedient or wholesome in the Chris-
tian Church ; whether they do not rather tend to obscure
and weaken the sense of the great brotherhood of the
Church Universal, and the more restricted, but perhaps
more consciously realized, brotherhood of each Christian's
particular or national Church, as well as those lesser bro-
therhoods which bind the faithful together in love and in
good works, viz. the Diocese and the Parish. I am not
blind to the value of organization and association for the
purpose of achieving this or that special object, for the
better discharge of this or that special duty to the mem-
bers of Christ's Body ; but where there is no such special
extrospective scope, it appears to me that the principle of
confraternities militates against the full realization of the
fundamental doctrines of the one Catholic and Apostolic
Church, and of the Communion of Saints, by substituting
a more special, self-regarding, self-regulated obligation for
the more general.

That outburst of indignation was, like all other popular
clamours, indiscriminate and unreasoning. It has not,
however, been without its use to the Church, in winnow-
ing and sifting opinion, and in directing the attention of
many of her loosely-thinking children to the actual posi-
tion which Confession holds in her system, and to the
limits within which it must be worked. In answer to the
violent and sweeping denunciations of all confession of sin
to a human guide, it is sufficient to say, that the craving
for this as a spiritual discipline and aid is too deeply
seated in certain types of human nature for any religious
system to afford to neglect, ignore, or repress it. But, like
other impulses, it requires to be regulated. The principle
which the Church of England adopts in clear contra-
distinction to Rome is this, Confession in her system is
a medicine of the soul. In the Roman system, Confession
is its necessary food. With them it is essential to the



io A C J uxrgc delivered at

worthy reception of the Eucharist ; it becomes part of the
regular routine of religious life, and increases in frequency,
the higher the standard of spirituality which is attained.
With us it is an exceptional mode of dealing with soul-
disease, a lower, not a higher state : it is compulsory on
none, even on the soul-sick : it is evidently contemplated
as a remedy and alleviation, to which rare or, at least, ex-
ceptional and unhabitual recourse should be had. I know
not how the teaching of the Church of England on this
subject, as fairly gathered from her formularies, can be
more clearly given than in the words of the Anglican
Episcopate recently assembled at Lambeth : — " No minis-
ter of the Church is authorized to require from those who
may resort to him to open their grief a particular or de-
tailed enumeration of all their sins, or to require private
confession previous to receiving the Holy Communion,
or to enjoin, or even encourage, the practice of habitual
confession to a Priest, or to teach that such practice of
habitual confession, or the being subject to what has been
termed the direction of a Priest, is a condition of attain-
ing to the highest spiritual life. At the same time, they
are not to be understood as desiring to limit in any way
the provision made in the Book of Common Prayer for
the relief of troubled consciences."

But even a more important and more ominous feature
in the religious history of these five years, has been the
marked advance and more unreserved outspokenness of
unbelief: more ominous, because it is easier for the excess
of belief, i.e. credulity and superstition, than for the de-
fect, to gravitate back to the mean. If it was found at
Lambeth to be practically impossible for a strong Com-
mittee, aided by the lucid sagacity of the Bishops of
Killaloe and Gloucester, to put forth any report on this
momentous question that could satisfactorily handle it ;
it stands to reason that I, who have neither the range
of reading nor yet the mental acumen necessary for such
a task, am utterly unequal to so doing in a Visitation
Charge. Without, however, attempting to particularize,
much less to discuss, the many forms and gradations of



Bridgetown, Barbados. 1 1

non-belief, I may usefully draw your attention to one or
two points in connection with it. First, its universality
and its multiform character. It is not too much to say
that it pervades literature : it is no longer the apparent
logical tendency of a certain school of biologists : I do
not think it is an exaggeration to say, that you seldom
meet with a treatise, or even a paper, in our more thought-
ful and philosophic periodical literature, which deals with
cosmic or psychic phenomena, or problems, which does
not more or less argue on some hypothesis of self-caus-
ation or self-evolution. Secondly, its aggressiveness. It
is no longer a demand for equal toleration with belief and
orthodoxy, for candid recognition of the co-ordinate but
divergent lines of religion and philosophy, of faith and
reason. Agnostic and materialistic philosophy has dropped
the defensive attitude, and carried the war into the very
camp of faith. It gives no quarter. Its almost savage in-
tolerance (if I may without impropriety so describe it),
and its impatience of dissent from the dicta of its favourite
prophets, if it were not ominous as regards the future out-
look, would be grotesquely amusing.

You may perhaps expect me, my reverend brethren, to
indicate to you where you are to look for answers to these
attacks, not on Christianity alone, but on Religion ; for re-
futations of the many forms of Atheism and Scepticism
which, we cannot doubt, must have come in the way, and
undermined or imperilled the faith, of the reading or think-
ing members of your flocks. I confess myself entirely
unable to do so. It is impossible that there can be any-
thing like discussion, with the hope of agreement, between
systems which have no common ground, and which, in fact,
mutually exclude each other. I do not even recommend
you to study and endeavour to master the vast sea of
materialistic and sceptic literature with which the press
now teems. I recommend to you rather the constructive
method, of studying and mastering the foundations on
which your own Christian faith and, in fact, religion gene-
rally are based, not resting content with the excellent
manuals and standard books on Evidences of a century



1 2 A Charge delivered at

ago, but keeping yourselves well abreast of the evidential
literature of the Church of our day, which, God be thanked,
is clear, full, able, and accessible to all.

One other consideration, or rather caution, I would ad-
vise you to impress on the sceptically disposed, or on
those who, as they grow up, are likely to fall within range
of temptation from this quarter. Do not be misled by
the authority of great names into accepting their dicta
as proved conclusions of Science or Philosophy. This is
a very real danger, and the source of much mischief both
to religion and to science. The exclusive appeal to autho-
rity is dangerous in religion, where the enlightened reason
is an important factor in the attainment and acceptance
even of revealed truth, (" I speak as to wise men," says St.
Paul; "judge ye what I say"). In science it is little
short of treasonable, and calculated to subvert the very
raison d'etre of science. And when we add to this danger
of accepting scientific and philosophic conclusions simply
and solely on the authority of the great prophets of science
and philosophy, the fact that these prophets have not
been careful (I put it most modestly and most guardedly)
to keep a clear line of demarcation between what is in-
ductively proved, or even inductively highly probable, and
what is mere brilliant hypothesis, ingenious, strikingly
probable, little short of an intuition or inspiration if you
will, but still mere undemonstrated hypothesis, you will
see the necessity for the caution I have given you, not to
be misled by the authority of great names into accepting
speculations as though they were incontrovertible truths.

I have advocated the study of evidential literature on
your own part, let me also advise you to endeavour to
secure, not the study of Evidences, (for to most young
minds this, like all ratiocinative study, is more or less dis-
tasteful and unfruitful, though there are exceptions,) but
clear, sound, intelligent, dogmatic teaching in all the articles
of the Christian Faith, as well as in the distinctive prin-
ciples, history and credentials of our mother Church of
England on the part of the younger members of your
flocks. And here I speak not so much (or at least by no



Bridgetoivn, Barbados. 13

means exclusively or preeminently) of the children in our
elementary schools, as of the young persons of both sexes
of our upper and middle classes in society. Ignorance, or
at least haziness, as to what they believe and why they
believe, is, I am convinced, a fatally common predisposing
nidus for the malaria of scepticism to germinate in, on the
principle that the empty house (as the parable teaches)
invites the tenancy of the seven spirits more wicked than
the first

A clergyman, now-a-days, needs to find or make leisure
for study, if he would keep abreast of the controversies
within the Church, as well as with her outside warfare.
Many beliefs which we have come to regard as settled
theological dogmas — the precise foundation and bearings
of which have perhaps never been exhaustively pursued or
authoritatively and explicitly defined, because never seri-
ously called in question — have in our feverish age of enquiry
and speculation been arraigned and thrown into the cru-
cible of investigation. And there is no doubt that the
general sense and teaching of the Church will, as time
goes on, be found to have been considerably modified
by such discussions, without the least fear of imperilling
thereby the sacred deposit of the faith once for all de-
livered to the saints, which is the very palladium of the
Church's existence. I may mention two such contro-
versies, as illustrations of my meaning : the controversy
on the meaning, nature and limits of Inspiration, and the
controversy which is at present so deeply engrossing
thoughtful minds in the mother Church on what is called
Eschatology, i.e. the condition of the life beyond the grave.
In recommending you to read and ponder on the literature
of these controverted subjects — such books, for example,
as Canon Farrar's " Eternal Hope," and the thoughtful
discussions and criticisms which it has evoked — I am far
from counselling you rashly to discard cherished opinions
and convictions, recommended and hallowed by the un-
questioned acceptance of some of God's truest saints ;
I am still further from counselling you, yea, I rather earn-
estly dissuade you, from rashly and needlessly unsettling



14 A Charge delivered at

the belief (so inextricably intertwined with conduct) of
your several flocks : but I do counsel you to careful, dis-
passionate reflection on these topics in your own study;
I do dissuade you from unenquiring, unreflective con-
demnation of opinions, which by their novelty may startle
and, perhaps, shock you as you first meet them ; and I
venture to propound to you as a sound principle of action
in the study of religious controversy, never to be more
dogmatic than the Church of which you are ministers, and
to be ever cautious of hasty limitation of terms which the
Church has not authoritatively defined.

The controversies of recent years have led me into a
digression. Let me return to the events of general inter-
est to the Church. No one can fail to have been struck
by the tendency towards approximation to the Anglican
Communion in one or other of its great centres, the
Churches of England and of America, on the part of
communities of anxious minds yearning for greater purity
of faith and practice, in the midst of corruption and degra-
dation and ignorance. Christians seeking a purer faith,
and yet clinging tight to Apostolic order and Catholic
tradition, seem to have recognized the Anglican obedience
as a natural point d'appui. And such I cannot doubt that,
by God's merciful Providence, it is destined to be, whether
in our generation or in the far-off future. You are all
sufficiently aware of the rapprochement which has taken
place between the old Catholics of Germany and ourselves,
and have read of the presence and active participation of
English Divines in their conferences. It would be prema-