Occasional Papers | Page 9

and as an additional proof of its Erastian
subjection to the State, and which also works ill and threatens serious
mischief, may fairly be regarded by Churchmen with jealousy and
dislike, and be denounced as injurious to interests for which they have
a right to claim respect. The complaint that the State is going to force
new senses on theological terms, or to change by an unavowed process
the meaning of acknowledged formularies in such a body as the
English Church, is at least as deserving of attention as the reluctance of
conscientious Dissenters to pay Church-rates.
Mr. Joyce's book shows comprehensively and succinctly the history of
the changes which have brought matters to their present point, and the
look which they wear in the eyes of a zealous Churchman, disturbed

both by the shock given to his ideas of fitness and consistency, and by
the prospect of practical evils. It is a clergyman's view of the subject,
but it is not disposed of by saying that it is a clergyman's view. It is
incomplete and one-sided, and leaves out considerations of great
importance which ought to be attended to in forming a judgment on the
whole question; but it is difficult to say that, regarded simply in itself,
the claim that the Church should settle her own controversies, and that
Church doctrine should be judged of in Church courts, is not a
reasonable one. The truth is that the present arrangement, if we think
only of its abstract suitableness and its direct and ostensible claims to
our respect, would need Swift himself to do justice to its exquisite
unreasonableness. It is absurd to assume, as it is assumed in the whole
of our ecclesiastical legislation, that the Church is bound to watch most
jealously over doctrine, and then at the last moment to refuse her the
natural means of guarding it. It is absurd to assume that the "spiritualty"
are the only proper persons to teach doctrine, and then to act as if they
were unfit to judge of doctrine. It is not easy, in the abstract, to see why
articles which were trusted to clergymen to draw up may not be trusted
to clergymen to explain, and why what there was learning and wisdom
enough to do in the violent party times and comparative inexperience
of the Reformation, cannot be safely left to the learning and wisdom of
our day for correction or completion. If Churchmen and ecclesiastics
may care too much for the things about which they dispute, it seems
undeniable that lawyers who need not even be Christians, may care for
them too little; and if the Churchmen make a mistake in the matter, at
least it is their own affair, and they may be more fairly made to take the
consequences of their own acts than of other people's. A strong case, if
a strong case were all that was wanted, might be made out for a change
in the authority which at present pronounces in the last resort on
Church of England doctrine.
But the difficulty is, not to see that the present state of things, which
has come about almost by accident, is irregular and unsatisfactory, and
that in it the civil power has stolen a march on the privileges which
even Tudors and Hanoverians left to the Church, but to suggest what
would be more just and more promising. A mixed tribunal, composed
of laymen and ecclesiastics, would be in effect, as Mr. Joyce perceives,
simply the present court with a sham colour of Church authority added

to it; and he describes with candid force the confusion which might
arise if the lawyers and divines took different sides, and how, in the
unequal struggle, the latter might "find themselves hopelessly prostrate
in the stronger grasp of their more powerful associates." His own
scheme of a theological and ecclesiastical committee of reference, to
which a purely legal tribunal might send down questions of doctrine to
be answered, as "experts" or juries give answers about matters of
science or matters of fact, is hardly more hopeful; for even he would
not bind the legal court, as of course it could not be bound, to accept
the doctrine of the ecclesiastical committee. He promises, indeed, on
the authority of Lord Derby, that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred
the lawyers would accept the answer of the divines; but whatever the
scandal is now, it would be far greater if an unorthodox judgment were
given in flat contradiction to the report of the committee of reference.
As to a purely ecclesiastical Court of Appeal, in the present state of the
Church both in England and all over the world, it ought to console
those who must be well aware that here at least it is hardly to