ON Friday, the 7th November, the second reading of a Bill that proposes grave alterations in the constitution of the Church of England, was carried by a large majority in the House of Commons. It is known as “The Enabling Bill.” The object of the Bill is to give a greater measure of self-government to the English Church, by instituting Assemblies that would have power to reform abuses and make changes and alterations in its internal management without undue control by the State. The proposal, expressed in this general, indefinite way, has a plausible appearance, and is likely to deceive many, as it seems to have done so already. The demand, on the surface, appears to be “greater spiritual freedom,” but we are grievously mistaken if the upshot will not prove, “greater spiritual bondage.” If the prevailing party in the Church of England at the present time were sound and evangelical in their principles, the Bill might be a real step in the right direction, and might lead to genuine reforms of the best kind, but, as everyone knows, the prevailing party are Ritualistic and Romanising to an alarming extent, and thus the new Bill, which is, in fact, by them promoted, is only a subtle scheme devised for the accomplishment of their mischievous designs.
It is unnecessary for us here to discuss all the details of the Bill. Readers are referred to “The English Churchman” for information. There is, in said paper of 13th November, an interesting report of “the Church Association Conference” at Liverpool, where vigorous and informing speeches were made against the Bill. It is sufficient for us to notice the general aspects and evil tendencies of the measure.
It may be observed, to begin with, that the Bill was first introduced into the House of Lords by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and other Bishops who had planned the scheme. These dignitaries are all men who, to more or less extent, have favoured and promoted the Ritualistic movement in the Church of England, and considering the scope of the measure as intended to give a greater degree of self-government to the Church, and to weaken the force of ancient restrictions, we have abundant reason, at the very outset, to stand in serious doubt of its design.
Then, secondly, when we consider more closely the amount of freedom sought for, and the positive movements in the English Church away from the Reformed standards towards wholesale Popery, which movements require legal sanction for complete success, we need be in no doubt whatsoever as to the evil character of the Bill. Of course, it is not proposed that the Church be entirely severed from the sovereign authority of the Crown, or from the supervision of Parliament—that would be entirely alien to the ambitions of the Archbishops and their colleagues—but rather that the sanction of the Crown and of Parliament to new laws be obtained as quickly and easily as possible. Measures agreed to by the proposed new “National Assembly” of the Church would “pass into law by the mere vote of an Address in each House of Parliament in their favour, without the ‘three readings’ required at present, and without either House having the right to amend the proposed measures in any way whatever. In this way Parliament would effectively abdicate its power for ecclesiastical legislation; it would become a mere court of registry for the edicts of the Church” (Captain Barron, at Church Association Conference).
This result having been secured, the sanction of the Crown would next follow without difficulty as a formal copestone to the legal adoption of the measures. Thus the sanction of Crown and Parliament would, by a short and easy method, be obtained for almost any schemes the National Assembly of the Church would propose.
Supporters of the Bill are keeping to the forefront the desirability that the Church should have power to remedy certain subordinate evils, such as power “to prevent the sale of advowsons”—advowsons are rights to present clergymen to vacant benefices, which rights may presently be sold—and power “to remove beneficed clergy who are manifestly unfit for the discharge of their duties, and to redress the grievance of clerical poverty by amalgamating country parishes.” Such evils are held forth as if they were the only things contemplated by the Bill, while all the while it is clearly decided that much greater evils are to be promoted by it than any that are to be removed.
Blind leaders of the blind, of course, call those greater evils good things: they want to undo the last remnants of the carved work of the Reformation from the English Church, and under the influence of strong delusion, to bring it into complete conformity to the temple of the Scarlet Woman, whose seat is at Rome. What are our grounds for this? Well, it is matter of common knowledge that the Convocations have already prepared a scheme for the revisal of the Prayer Book in a Romeward direction, for the legalisation of Mass Vestments and of the Reservation of the Sacrament, for the suppression of part of the words of administration, and for the permission of such changes as would assimilate the English Communion Service to the Roman Missal. And is not belief in purgatory, prayers for the dead, prayers to the Virgin and saints, transubstantiation, and such like, common enough already in the Church of England? All these things would fall to be legally sanctioned by the steps proposed in this Bill.
Further, the Bill is “intended to give the National Assembly power to promote Measures, extending to ‘the amendment or repeal, in whole or in part, of any Act of Parliament, including this Act.’ The Bill of Rights, the Act of Settlement, the Act establishing the Coronation Oath, and the Acts of Union with Scotland and Ireland, and many other basal Statutes of the Constitution were open to attack by the short and easy method of a ‘Church’ Measure and a couple of rushed addresses to the Throne” (see Captain Barron’s speech). It appears plainly that the most important national institutions are liable to be assailed by the provisions of the Bill, and there is a call to the nation at large to awake to the danger to which its rights are exposed. Some are calling for the Disestablishment of the English Church, and certainly if our Crown and Parliament are to be made the direct patrons and upholders of a Popish Establishment, Disestablishment will be the only way of preventing national guilt of the gravest description.
The Bill now under review is at the Committee stage in Parliament, and it is to be sincerely hoped that favourable changes will be made before it is presented for final adoption. “The Lord reigneth.” We trust He may over-rule all for His own glory and the ultimate good of His cause.
None of our readers, however, must conclude from the above remarks that we have ever approved of the constitution of the Church of England and its subordination to the State, though certainly we have admired many eminent servants of Christ that have lived and laboured within its pale. But we observe in the present Bill a carrying forward of the destructive work of Romanisers, who are doing their best to destroy God’s cause in the land, and it is our duty to expose and condemn their proceedings.
How long He seeks! How long a night-rain wets His locks and hair! How long a night it is He stands at the church-door, knocking! There be many hours in this night since He was preached in paradise, and yet He stands to this day. How fain would He come, and how glad would He be of lodging! The arm that hath knocked five thousand years aches not yet. Behold, He stands and knocks, and will not give over till all be His, and till the tribes—in ones and twos—be over Jordan, and up with Him in the good land.—Samuel Rutherford.