Phases of Faith | Page 8

and get
some credit from it. Now what were Bishops for, but to be the
originators and energetic organs of all pious and good works? and what
were they in the House of Lords for, if not to set a higher tone of purity,
justice, and truth? and if they never did this, but weighed down those
who attempted it, was not that a condemnation (not, perhaps, of all
possible Episcopacy, but) of Episcopacy as it exists in England? If such
a thing as a moral argument for Christianity was admitted as valid,
surely the above was a moral argument against English Prelacy. It was,
moreover, evident at a glance, that this system of ours neither was, nor
could have been, apostolic: for as long as the civil power was hostile to
the Church, a Lord bishop nominated by the civil ruler was an
impossibility: and this it is, which determines the moral and spiritual
character of the English institution, not indeed exclusively, but
preeminently.
I still feel amazement at the only defence which (as far as I know) the
pretended followers of Antiquity make for the nomination of bishops
by the Crown. In the third and fourth centuries, it is well known that
every new bishop was elected by the universal suffrage of the laity of
the church; and it is to these centuries that the High Episcopalians love
to appeal, because they can quote thence out of Cyprian[2] and others
in favour of Episcopal authority. When I alleged the dissimilarity in the
mode of election, as fatal to this argument in the mouth of an English
High Churchman, I was told that "the Crown now represents the
Laity!" Such a fiction may be satisfactory to a pettifogging lawyer, but
as the basis of a spiritual system is indeed supremely contemptible.
With these considerations on my mind,--while quite aware that some of
the bishops were good and valuable men,--I could not help feeling that
it would be a perfect misery to me to have to address one of them taken
at random as my "Right Reverend Father in God," which seemed like a
foul hypocrisy; and when I remembered who had said, "Call no man
Father on earth; for one is your Father, who is in heaven:"--words,
which not merely in the letter, but still more distinctly in the spirit,
forbid the state of feeling which suggested this episcopal
appellation,--it did appear to me, as if "Prelacy" had been rightly
coupled by the Scotch Puritans with "Popery" as antichristian.
Connected inseparably with this, was the form of Ordination, which,

the more I thought of it, seemed the more offensively and outrageously
Popish, and quite opposed to the Article on the same subject. In the
Article I read, that we were to regard such to be legitimate ministers of
the word, as had been duly appointed to this work by those who have
public authority for the same. It was evident to me that this very wide
phrase was adapted and intended to comprehend the "public
authorities" of all the Reformed Churches, and could never have been
selected by one who wished to narrow the idea of a legitimate minister
to Episcopalian Orders; besides that we know Lutheran and Calvinistic
ministers to have been actually admitted in the early times of the
Reformed English Church, by the force of that very Article. To this, the
only genuine Protestant view of a Church, I gave my most cordial
adherence: but when I turned to the Ordination Service, I found the
Bishop there, by his authoritative voice, absolutely to bestow on the
candidate for Priesthood the power to forgive or retain sins!--"Receive
ye the Holy Ghost! Whose sins ye forgive, they are forgiven: whose
sins ye retain, they are retained." If the Bishop really had this power, he
of course had it only as Bishop, that is, by his consecration; thus it was
formally transmitted. To allow this, vested in all the Romish bishops a
spiritual power of the highest order, and denied the legitimate
priesthood in nearly all the Continental Protestant Churches--a doctrine
irreconcilable with the article just referred to and intrinsically to me
incredible. That an unspiritual--and it may be, a wicked--man, who can
have no pure insight into devout and penitent hearts, and no
communion with the Source of holy discernment, could never receive
by an outward form the divine power to forgive or retain sins, or the
power of bestowing this power, was to me then, as now, as clear and
certain as any possible first axiom. Yet if the Bishop had not this power,
how profane was the pretension! Thus again I came into rude collision
with English Prelacy.
The year after taking my degree, I made myself fully master of Paley's
acute and original treatise, the "Horæ