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Page 26
This gentleman is a Protestant, and the son of a Protestant clergyman,
so we may be quite sure that he harbours no special leanings towards
us, yet he speaks impartially as one who has not only read history,
but read it without coloured spectacles. Perhaps Lord Macaulay puts
the case as bluntly as any one, and we may as well quote him because
he, too, was no Catholic, and held no brief for the Church of Rome.
This brilliant writer, who was, perhaps, an historian before all
things, tells us that the work of the Reformation was the work, not of
three saints, nor even of three ordinary decent men, but of three
notorious murderers! These are not our words, but Macaulay's, and it
is not our fault if this is his reading of history. We merely summon
him as a Protestant witness. He calmly and deliberately states that
the Reformation was "begun by Henry VIII., the murderer of his wives;
was continued by Somerset, the murderer of his brother; and was
completed by Elizabeth, the murderer of her guest". Not a very
auspicious beginning, it must be confessed, and scarcely suggestive of
the Divine afflatus. Those who planted the Catholic Church used no
violence, and did not inflict death. No! on the contrary, they endured
death, and their blood became the seed of the Church. And that is
quite another story. In former days every one admitted the present
Anglican Church to be the child of the Reformation. It was, to quote
the Protestant historian, Child, "as completely the creation of Henry
VIII., Edward's Council, and Elizabeth as Saxon Protestantism was of
Luther." But now? Oh! now, "nous avons chang� tout cela," and history
has received a totally different setting. A certain section of
Anglicans, in these modern times, are labouring hard to persuade
themselves and others that they can trace their Church back to the
time of St. Augustine. They will by no means allow that they started
into being only in the sixteenth century. In fact, it is quite
pathetic to watch the strenuous efforts they make, and the extravagant
means to which they have recourse, in order to lull themselves into
the peaceful enjoyment of so sweet and consoling a delusion.
A delusion which a candid study of past history must sooner or later
ruthlessly dispel, and which has not a shred of foundation in fact to
support it. But we promised to point out WHY, in spite of
its absolute absurdity, these good men, like the Bishop of London,
persist in repeating and restating with ever-increasing vehemence that
there has been no break in the continuity, and that the present Church
of England is one with the Church of St. Bede, of St. Dunstan, of St.
Anselm, of St. Thomas, and of other pre-Reformation heroes; though
they must surely know that there is not one amongst these glorious old
Catholic saints who would not a thousand times sooner have gone to the
stake and been burnt alive, than have accepted the Thirty-nine
Articles, or than have joined the present Bishop of London in any of
his religious services. Why do Anglicans make such heroic efforts to
connect their Church with the past? Why do they advance an impossible
theory? Why will they stubbornly affirm what history utterly denies?
Why do they assert, and with such emphasis, what no one but they
themselves have the hardihood to believe? Why? For precisely the same
reason that will induce a drowning man to grasp at a straw. In short,
because even if they did not realise it before, they are now
beginning to see that their very position depends upon their being
able to make out some sort of case for continuity. They realise that
to admit that the Church of England began in the sixteenth century is
simply to cut the ground from underneath their feet. Therefore, purely
in self-defence, they feel themselves constrained to cling to the
continuity theory. It may be absurd, it may be unhistorical, it may be
impossible and utterly repudiated by every impartial and honest man.
That cannot be helped. Impossible or not impossible; true or false, it
is necessary for their very existence, so that, just as a drowning man
catches at a straw, though it cannot possibly support him, so do these
most unfortunate and hardly-pressed men clutch at and cling to the
hollow theory of continuity. Sometimes, when off their guard, and in a
less cautious mood, they will confess as much themselves. And what is
more, we can provide our readers with an instance of such a
confession. Many will well remember a well-known and distinguished
Anglican divine, named Canon Malcolm MacColl. He died a few years ago,
and we do not wish to say anything against him. Well, he wrote to _The
Spectator_ in 1900. His letter may be seen in the issue of 22nd
December for that year. In the course of this letter he makes the
following admission: he declares that "to concede that the Church of
England starts from the reign of Henry VIII. or Elizabeth is to
surrender the whole ground of controversy with Rome. A Church," he
continues, "which cannot trace its origin beyond the sixteenth century
is obviously not the Church which Christ founded."
The late Anglican Canon MacColl is, of course, perfectly right, and
his inference is strictly logical. A Church, however highly
respectable and however richly endowed, which came into existence only
1,500 years after Christ, came into existence just 1,500 years too
late, and cannot by any intellectual manoeuvring or stretching of the
imagination be identified with the one Church established by Christ
1,500 years earlier. Consequently every member of the Anglican
community finds himself, _nolens volens_, impaled on the horns of a
truly frightful dilemma. For either he must frankly confess that his
Church is not the Church of God, _i.e._, not the True Church, which
(human nature being what it is) he can hardly be expected to do; or
else he must assert that it goes back without any real break to the
time of the Apostles; which though absolutely untrue, is the only
other alternative. In a word, he finds himself in a very tight corner.
He knows, unless he is able to persuade himself of the truth of
continuity, the very ground of his faith must slip from under his
feet, and that he must give up pretending to be a member of Christ's
mystical body altogether.
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