History of the Christian church (Volume 5) online

British army. There he remained, and made a fine
record as a schoolmaster, until 1873. In these four-
teen years the man was formed. His intellectual de-



536 History of the Christian Church.

velopment was most influenced by Dr. Arnold, the
famous master of Rugby. In religion he was earnest
and devout. In ecclesiastical relations he was a High
Churchman. He loved pomp and ceremony and
ritual. As his son says, *' He had a liturgical mind."
Without largeness of view or profundity of thought,
he had a firm and comprehensive grasp of detail.
Without the precision of a statesman so as to forecast
the ultimate issues of a policy, he had that command
of the details of a situation which mark a man of
business and of administrative capacity. He was
without special powers of persuasion, and was subject
to attacks of profound depression to the end of his
life. More than preacher or great prelate, his were
the qualities of a great master of a school ; for one
can not but think that the service he most enjoyed
was his weekly exposition of the Greek New Testa-
ment to a large class of ladies of culture and rank,
quite in the Rugby and Wellington manner.

But Edward White Benson was a man of character,
and his scholarship, if not so profound or accurate as
that of some others, was both vivid and vital, qualities
by no means to be despised. He longed for more di-
rect service in the Church. In 1869 he had been
made chaplain to Bishop Wordsworth, of Lincoln, by
whom he was greatly attracted, and to whom and his
family he was tenderly attached. At Wellington his
salary was ten thousand dollars per year, and he was
married the year his work began there. Financial
independence to a man tried as Benson had been was
not a thing to be despised by the head of a growing
family; yet in December, 1872, he made the decision



Evangelical Church in Great Britain. 537

and left Wellington to become chancellor of the Bishop
of Lincoln, at an income just one-half of what he had
before received. Three years later he was called as
the first bishop to the newly-created See of Truro, for
Cornwall. Here, in six years, he achieved a great
success in establishing the Church of England in
Cornwall, the most Methodist county in England, and
in founding Truro Cathedral, the corner-stone of which
was laid in 1880. The building is to cost some $600,-
000 to complete, and a quarter of that sum was raised
during Dr. Benson's occupancy of the See. His skill
and success, and his S3^mpathies as a High Churchman
made him the successor of Archbishop Tait, and he
was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury in March,
1883.

The chief events of his fourteen years' adminis-
tration of the Primacy of the English Church were
the addition of a House of Laymen, 1886, jhe Third
to the sessions of Convocation, the Third Lambeth con-
Lambeth Conference, the Lincoln judg- Lambeth
ment, the Clergy Discipline Bill, the Pat- Declaration.
ronage Bill, and the effort to secure the papal appro-
bation for the orders of the Church of England. The
Third Lambeth Conference found one hundred and
forty-five bishops present ; two hundred and nine had
been invited. Its most noteworthy action was the for-
mulation of the essentials of communion with other
branches of the Christian Church. These, known as
the Lambeth Declaration, are as follows :

A. The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testa-
ments, as containing all things necessary to salvation ;
and as being the rule and ultimate standard of faith.



538 History of the Christian Church,

B. The Apostle's Creed as the baptismal symbol;
and the Nicene Creed as the sufficient statement of the
Christian faith.

C. The two sacraments ordained by Christ him-
self—Baptism and the Supper of the Lord — ministered
with unfailing use of Christ's words of Institution and
of the elements ordained by him.

D. The Historic Episcopate, " locally adapted in
the methods of its administration to the varying needs
of the nations and peoples called of God into the unity
of his Church." They also "gladly and thankfully
recognize the real religious work which is carried on
by Christian bodies not of our communion." This
declaration has not drawn a single organized body of
Christians into communion with the Church of Eng-
land, but it has had great influence in realizing a
much larger and stronger bond of Christian frater-
nity, and more in the Church of England than out-
side of it.

The Lincoln judgment was pending for two years,
1888 — November 21, 1890. It was occasioned by a

^j^g suit brought against Dr. King, Bishop of
Lincoln Lincoln, for illegal acts performed during
Judgment. ^y^\^^ service. In the case, Archbishop
Benson showed a thorough mastery of all the details
connected with it, and the judgment he rendered has
been generally admired for its learning, its reasoning,
and its impartiality, though the effect was greatly to
strengthen the hands of the High Church party. Its
restrictions on extravagant ritual w^ere little heeded,
and this has made necessary further legislation. The
conclusions of this judgment are as follows :

I. The Mixed Chalice (water with the wine). The



Evangelical Church in Great Britain. 539

mixed chalice is not condemned, but the action must
not be performed during the service.

2. The Eastward Position. The eastward position
is allowed, but " any special significance which at once
makes the position itself important and condemns it"
was entirely and strongly set aside. The position
was not essential. " The imputed sacrificial aspect of
the eastward position is new and forced." Hence lib-
erty is granted.

3. Manual acts must be in sight of the congrega-
tion. This is contrary to the practice of the Church
of Rome.

4. Singing of the "Agnus Dei " after the prayer of
consecration is allowed.

5. The ceremony of ablution after the dismission
of the service is allowed.

6. lyights are allowed, but must not be lighted dur-
ing service.

7. Signing the cross in absolution and benediction
is forbidden.

The Clergy Discipline Bill, which, after strenuous
effort, the archbishop succeeded in getting enacted in
1892, simplified the procedure so that it
became possible to remove clergymen from Discipline and
their livings who were of notoriously evil Patronage
or of scandalous lives. That this was not
done in Wesley's time shows the tremendous inertia
of the English Parliament in dealing with Church
matters.

An even more difficult subject engaged the efforts
of the archbishop in 1886, 1887, and 1893, — that of
Church patronage. The provisions of the bills he
favored, only became law in 1898. To Americans



540 History of the Christian Church.

they seemed like very slight modifications of abuses
whose reform can not be long delayed. These modi-
fications required the sales of advowson, or right of
patronage, to be registered, forbade the sale of next
presentation or sale by auction of any right of patron-
age (except as part of an estate), and invalidated
agreement to exercise the right of patronage in favor
of a particular person. A stringent declaration was
required of the candidate against simony.

A bishop also may refuse to institute the candidate
because three years have not elapsed since he was
ordained deacon, on account of physical or mental in-
firmity, evil life, grave pecuniary embarrassments,
misconduct, or neglect of duty in ecclesiastical ofl&ce.

A bishop also can not admit to a benefice until one
month after intention to do so has been notified to the
Church wardens. Benefices formerly donative (that
is, given without regard to the bishop) after 1898 be-
came presentative ; that is, required the bishop's in-
stitution. It is sad to think that, one thousand nine
hundred years after Christ, the right to appoint a
pastor of Christ's flock is still in Evangelical England
a property right, and is bought and sold in most of the
parishes of the Church of England.

In 1894, through the eager efforts of Lord Halifax,

began the second movement after the failure of Dr.

Leo xiii's Pusey's *' Eirenicons," to reach some nearer

Denial of the approximation to a recognition by the

OMe'r?oftie^ Romau Catholic Church of the Church of

Church of England as preparatory to an ecclesiastical

ng an . intercourse and communion between them.
As in the case of Dr. Pusey before the Vatican Coun-
cil, some French ecclesiastics were interested in the



Evangelical Church in Great Britalx. 541

affair and a "Revue Anglo-Romaine " was started.
By a zealous propaganda, Mr. Gladstone's support for
the movement was secured. Then the archbishop was
besieged. How far he yielded is not quite clear ; but at
least the appearance was gained that he sanctioned a
movement which he owed to his office most vigorously
to repel. Thus, with his implied sanction, the orders,
and hence ordinations, of the English Church, his
fellow-prelates and his own included, were submitted
to the scrutiny of a papal congregation. In Septem-
ber, 1896, appeared the Papal Bull "Apostolicae
Curse," in which the archbishop and the High Church
party found that Leo XIII, to their intense chagrin,
pronounced the orders of the Church of England null
and void. They were so pronounced on account of
defects in form up to 1662, and from that year defect-
ive in intention on the part of the framers of the
Prayer Book of that date.

This is altogether the severest blow that the Oxford
Movement as originally designed, and the ritualistic
party of the English Church, had sustained since the
Vatican Council. It ends all hope of corporate reunion
except on the basis of complete surrender ; as Arch-
bishop Benson wrote to Lord Halifax, " It is impos-
sible that any step could be taken [toward a com-
munion with Rome] whilst the validity of our English
orders remained unacknowledged." It ought to be
said, also, that the course of Leo XIII was the only
one consistent with truth and honesty. The ritual-
istic fatuity in regard to historic facts never received
clearer illustration or brought greater humiliation
upon themselves or the Church to which they be-
longed.



542 History of the Christian Church.

The High Church party has the supremacy in the
Church of England ; but the power and influence of
the ritualistic movement has passed its zenith. In
1889, Archbishop Benson visited Oxford, and he wrote :
" But in spite of all [Paget, Gore, etc.], a gradual alien-
ation of intellect is in progress from the ritualistic
school. I see in this school what Newman speaks of
as ' higher tints of summer past,' a grand autumnal
coloring, which has nothing but winter to follow it.
It will not leave such laymen as both Arnold and
Newman left behind them, who have no successor.
I believe the hard work of the ritualists to be such
as is brought out by any and every party enthusiasm
for a time, and do not believe that the Churches are
filled by their ritual, but only as a consequence of
that very good work." Of another and evil side a
year later, while dwelling upon the lack of doctrinal
knowledge and the skepticisms in high circles in
Church and society, he writes, '' And all of our time
and most of our thoughts are taken up with those
dreadful lights and ablutions."

His perception of the harm and self-will of the
extreme ritualists deepened with his increased experi-
ence of the duties of his office. In 1893 he speaks of
a conversation with the Bishop of Rochester, in which
they discussed "the absolute necessity of dropping
Goulden's College from the list of Theological Colleges;
no reality in it; the men obliged to teach in the
Sunday-school ' The Mass ' and the presence of flesh,
blood, soul, Divinity, upon the altar, and other equally
un-Anglican tenets. It is monstrous, and we can not
be accomplices in it by silence." In the same year
he wrote of the chapel of All Saints Sisterhood: " It



Evangelical Church in Great Britain. 543

is a noble place ; but I am not sure but the spirit of
faction is as strong there as in the world." Two years
later of another Sisterhood he wrote : " The fact is,
the Kilburn Sisterhood is a dissenting community,
owning no bishop or authority of any kind. And
there are no worse mines under the Church than such
bodies."

In respect to fasting communion, to the Reforma-
tion, and to Church Union, Archbishop Benson had no
fellowship with the extreme High Church party,
whether of 1842 or since. He says, quoting King
Bishop of Lincoln, " Fasting communion is good for
those for whom it is good, and to be recommended if
people can bear it." But he greatly deprecates the
language and practice used and enforced about it by a
certain party. He says that Canon Carter, Liddon,
Bishop Webb most strongly, and others on that side,
have all held the same. There is nothing " deadly "
in taking food before it. ** At ordinations he himself
always beforehand takes tea and dry toast." Of the
Reformation he said, in strange contrast with the
leaders of the Oxford School : " To my mind the Eng-
lish Reformation— and I am as certain of the fact as I
can be of anything — is' the greatest event in Church
history since the days of the apostles. It does bring
back the Church of God to the primitive model." On
Church union he said, the year before his death, what
all friends of Christian union would do well to lay to
heart: "How narrow the purview of reunion with
Rome is, especially when one realizes that it means
excluding the chief part of Christendom."

Two or three brief extracts will even more bring
the man before us. In his sermon before the Lambeth



544 History of the Christian Church.

Conference in 1888 he said: " Unworldliness is not
emptiness of garners, but the right and noble use of
garners filled by God. An unworldly clergy is not a
clergy without a world, but one which knows the
world, uses and teaches man how to use the world for
God, until at last it brings the whole world home to
God." A year later he writes : " What a strange, short
thing this life of ours is — strange that so much should
tumble into it ! The Incarnation is the only thing
which seems to draw music out of its fretting wires."
Years before he wrote what so often strikes disso-
nantly upon us all, " Why do great good men so ut-
terly mistake and ignore each other, when we know
that they will walk with clasped hands in Paradise."

In October, 1896, Archbishop Benson and wife
were on a visit to Mr. Gladstone. October i ith, in
Hawarden Church, during the service he sank in his
seat and was not, for toil had ceased and reward begun.

The Archbishop of Canterbury with the strongest
intellect of any occupant of that See in the nineteenth
century was Frederick Temple (1821-1902).
"^Temple!" ^^^ father was an officer of the British
army, and he was born at Santa Maura, in
the Ionian Islands. His father died when he was
quite young, and he was left to the care of a widowed
mother and, as he gratefully records, of a Methodist
aunt. In those days of poverty he could not prepare
for the university in any of England's great public
schools like Rugby and Harrow, but at a private
school, an excellent one though, at Tiverton. He
graduated double first-class at Oxford in 1842. After
vSome experience in tutoring, in 1848 he became prin-
cipal of Kneller Hall, Twickenham, where he re-



Evangelical Church in Great Britain. 545

mained for ten years. For the next eleven years he
was head master at Rugby, where he made a reputa-
tion for the school and for himself. In i860 he wrote
an essay on "The Education of the World " for the
" Essays and Reviews." The storm this evoked has
been mentioned. His friend Dr. Benson, afterward
Archbishop of Canterbury, though a High Church-
man, came out in his defense in the London Times.
Temple was Bishop of Exeter, 1 869-1 885 ; Bishop of
London, 1 885-1 896; Archbishop of Canterbury, 1896-
1902. He was a Radical in politics, a Broad Church-
man in Church affairs, a total abstainer from intox-
icants, and a rigid disciplinarian. Somewhat brusque
in manner, he was noted for his perfect justice and
common sense. The schoolboy who wrote to his
father that *' Temple is a beast, but a just beast,"
touched his chief characteristic. He sought thorough
comprehension in the Church. He married at the age
of fifty-five and was seventy-five when made arch-
bishop.

He published Bampton Lectures on " Relation of
Religion and Science," 1884, and three volumes of
''Sermons," preached at Rugby.

The Fourth Lambeth Conference, 1898, had two
hundred bishops present, out of the two hundred and
fifty who were eligible and who received invitations.

The most noteworthy event in the administration
of the See of Canterbury by Archbishop Temple was
the decision pronounced jointly by the The Decision
Archbishops of Canterbury and York after ^^^^^J^'^^^p^
a full hearing of the parties by counsel !„ Regard to
upon the points involved in the ritualistic '^*'""'-
controversy. The ritualists in the Church of England
35



546 History of the Christian Church.

and in the Protestant Episcopal Church in America
claim six points in ritual observance as essential for
"Catholic" worship. These are the use of Eucha-
ristic vestments, altar lights, the mixed chalice, un-
leavened bread, the eastward position, and the use
of incense. Dr. Pusey thought, as we have seen, the
concession of the use of the vestments and of the east-
ward position would content the ritualistic party, but
now nothing less than the whole program would
satisfy them. Therefore the two archbishops entered
into an exhaustive investigation of the question as to
what, if any, limitations of ritual were most obligatory
by the law of the English Church. They pronounced,
in their decision of August, 1899, that the use of in-
cense in any act of worship, the use of processional
lights, and, later, the reservation of the elements, were
forbidden by the law of the English Church. This
decision rested upon the Act of Uniformity of 1559,
which was adopted by the Convocations in the revis-
ion of the English Prayer-book in 1662. This decis-
ion was the act of the Archbishops of the English
Church interpreting the law of the English Church,
and upon any principles of Church Discipline or of
Canonical obedience was especially binding upon the
ritualistic clergy.

Archbishop Temple, in his Pastoral, went farther
than in the decision which was confined to the points
Archbishop brought before them. In his Pastoral he
Temple's affirmed that, in the Church of England,
Pastoral, u ^^^ compulsory confession, direct or indi-
rect, is ever allowed," and that *' no external mark of
adoration of Christ, in the Eucharist, is allowed." He
further said, " No invocations of Holy Angels or of



Evangelical Church in Great Britain. 547

the Blessed Virgin, or of departed saints, and no defi-
nite prayers for the dead, can be allowed to find a
place in any service to be used within the walls of a
consecrated church" belonging to the Church of
England.

This shows the line of demarkation between the
worship of the Roman Catholic Church and that al-
lowed by the Church of England.

In these years, for the first time in a century,
England came to make herself felt in Biblical scholar-
ship. This influence came chiefly from ^^^
Cambridge University. It had reference Cambridge
mainly to studies in the New Testament ^^*'°'^"-
and in the history of the early Church. These men
knew the best work done in Germany, but were not
imitators, but independent investigators, and two ot
them were great prelates.

The scholar of the widest knowledge and the clear-
est insight into historic relationships was Joseph
Barber Lightfoot (1828-1889). Lightfoot,

. 1 M 1 Lightfoot.

later Bishop of Durham, was a sickly child,
and was educated at home until he was thirteen years
of age. Two years later his father died. In 1844
he entered King Edward's School at Birmingham, ancf,
three years later, Trinity College, Cambridge. There
he took private lessons of Brooke F. Westcott, who
had left the Birmingham school three years earlier,
and who became his lifelong friend. Graduating
from Trinity in 1851, the next year he was elected
Fellow of that college, and taught private pupils for
the three years succeeding. In 1857 he was made
tutor in Trinity, with classes in New Testament
Greek. The year following he was ordained. In iS6i



548 History of the Christian Church.

he was made Hulsean Professor of Divinity, and only
Trinity Hall could contain the crowd of students who
thronged to hear him. In 1862 he became royal
chaplain, and in 1875 deputy clerk of the closet, an
important, confidential position; in the former year
Archbishop Tait appointed him examining chaplain^
His fame as a preacher caused him to be appointed
Whitehall preacher, 1 866-1 867, and University preacher
at Oxford, 1 874-1 875. In 1871 he was made Canon
of St. Paul's, and in 1877 served on the Universities
Commission. In 1875 ^^ was chosen Lady Margaret
Professor of Divinity at Cambridge. In 1867 he had
declined the Bishopric of Litchfield; but, on the ad-
vice of his friends, in 1879 he accepted the great See
of Durham.

Bishop Lightfoot was unequaled in his mastery of
the New Testament Greek and the surroundings of the
early Church and its patristic literature. He was the
best Ethiopic scholar in England, and gave careful
attention to the different early versions of the New
Testament. To the learned world he will ever be
known by his Biblical essays, published in connection
with his Commentaries, and by his great work on the
Epistles of Ignatius. His commentaries are of great
value, though his is not the most penetrating exegesis.
To the English-speaking world he has left his monu-
ment and legacy in the Revised New Testament of
1 88 1, which is his work more than that of any other
man. To all Christians everywhere, his essay on
'* The Christian Ministry " contains the wisest words
on that subject written in the century in which he
lived, and which, when he became a great prelate, he
refused to modify.



Evangelical Church in Great Britain. 549

Bishop lyightfoot was a small, dark-complexioued
man, with a squint in his vision ; but his weight of
learning, impartiality of judgment, and noble character,
made him one of the great men of the century. He
showed his administrative gifts in the University Sen-
ate and in the great Diocese of Durham. He was
rich, and never married. In his ten years at Durham,
over a million of dollars was raised for Church pur-
poses, and two hundred thousand for a church-build-
ing fund. To all these purposes he contributed liber-
ally; but no gift showed more the direction of his
thought than that of twenty-two thousand five hun-
dred dollars, in 1870, to found scholarships at Cam-
bridge in *' Church history in its connection with
general history."

Brooke Foss Westcott (1825-1901), the lifelong
friend of I^ightfoot, was his successor in the See of
Durham, and, like him, his learning lent

' '. , , ' , . , ., . , Westcott.

luster to English scholarship, while it made
the New Testament have a deeper significance and a
clearer meaning to English readers. He was born
near Birmingham, and from King Edward's School he
entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he gradu-
ated, and took a Fellowship in 1849. In 1852 he be-
came assistant master at Harrow, where he remained
for the next seventeen years. In 1 857 he was ordained.
In 1869 he became Canon of Peterborough, and the
year after he was made rector of Somersham. These
two positions he held together until 1882. He became
Queen's Chaplain, 1875-1879, and select preacher at
Oxford, 1 877-1 880. In 1883 he was made Canon of
Westminster. From 1870 to 1890 he was Regius
Professor of Divinity at Cambridge. In 1890 he sue-



550 History of the Christian Church,

ceeded to the See of Durham, which he held until his
death. Bishop Westcott will be longest remembered
by his work on the " Text of the New Testament,"
which resulted in the Westcott and Hort's Edition of
the Greek New Testament, 1881, and which super-
seded all other editions.

In 1855 he published the best account in English
of the " History of the New Testament Canon," and
in i860 an excellent manual for that date, " Introduc-
tion to the Study of the Gospels." His commentary
on the Gospel of St. John in the Speaker's Commen-
tary is the best on that Gospel, while his Commen-
taries on the Greek text of the Epistle of St. John
and on the Epistle to the Hebrews can never lose
their value. His " Gospel of the Resurrection " and