Carlton had opened the small church he was serving for Saints'-day
services during the Long Vacation; and not being in the way to have any
congregation, and the church at Horsley being closed except on Sundays,
he had asked his two pupils to help him in this matter, by walking over
with him on St. Matthew's day, which, as the season was fine, and the
walk far from a dull one, they were very glad to do. When church was
over Carlton had to attend a sick call which lay still farther from
Horsley, and the two young men walked back together.
“I did not know that Carlton was so much of a party man,” said
Sheffield; “did not his reading the Athanasian Creed strike you?”
“That's no mark of party, surely,” answered Charles.
“To read it on days like these, I think, is a mark of party;
it's going out of the way.”
Charles did not see how obeying in so plain a matter the clear
direction of the Prayer Book could be a party act.
“Direction!” said Sheffield, “as if the question were not, is that
direction now binding? the sense, the understanding of the Church of
this day determines its obligation.”
“The prima facie view of the matter,” said Charles, “is, that
they who do but follow what the Prayer Book enjoins are of all people
farthest from being a party.”
“Not at all,” said Sheffield; “rigid adherence to old customs surely
may be the badge of a party. Now consider; ten years ago, before the
study of Church-history was revived, neither Arianism nor Athanasianism
were thought of at all, or, if thought of, they were considered as
questions of words, at least as held by most minds—one as good as the
other.”
“I should say so, too, in one sense,” said Charles, “that is, I
should hope that numbers of persons, for instance, the unlearned, who
were in Arian communities spoke Arian language, and yet did not mean
it. I think I have heard that some ancient missionary of the Goths or
Huns was an Arian.”
“Well, I will speak more precisely,” said Sheffield: “an Oxford man,
some ten years since, was going to publish a history of the Nicene
Council, and the bookseller proposed to him to prefix an engraving of
St. Athanasius, which he had found in some old volume. He was strongly
dissuaded from doing so by a brother clergyman, not from any feeling of
his own, but because 'Athanasius was a very unpopular name among us.'”
“One swallow does not make a spring,” said Charles.
“This clergyman,” continued Sheffield, “was a friend of the most
High-Church writers of the day.”
“Of course,” said Reding, “there has always been a heterodox school
in our Church—I know that well enough—but it never has been powerful.
Your lax friend was one of them.”
“I believe not, indeed,” answered Sheffield; “he lived out of
controversy, was a literary, accomplished person, and a man of piety to
boot. He did not express any feeling of his own; he did but witness to
a fact, that the name of Athanasius was unpopular.”
“So little was known about history,” said Charles, “this is not
surprising. St. Athanasius, you know, did not write the Creed called
after him. It is possible to think him intemperate, without thinking
the Creed wrong.”
“Well, then, again; there's Beatson, Divinity Professor; no one will
call him in any sense a party man; he was put in by the Tories, and
never has committed himself to any liberal theories in theology. Now, a
man who attended his private lectures assures me that he told the men,
'D'ye see,' said he, 'I take it, that the old Church-of-England mode of
handling the Creed went out with Bull. After Locke wrote, the old
orthodox phraseology came into disrepute.'”
“Well, perhaps he meant,” said Charles, “that learning died away,
which was the case. The old theological language is plainly a learned
language; when fathers and schoolmen were not read, of course it would
be in abeyance; when they were read again, it has revived.”
“No, no,” answered Sheffield, “he said much more on another
occasion. Speaking of Creeds, and the like, 'I hold,' he said, 'that
the majority of the educated laity of our Church are Sabellians.'”
Charles was silent, and hardly knew what reply to make. Sheffield
went on: “I was present some years ago, when I was quite a boy, when a
sort of tutor of mine was talking to one of the most learned and
orthodox divines of the day, a man whose name has never been associated
with party, and the near relation and connexion of high dignitaries,
about a plan of his own for writing a history of the Councils. This
good and able man listened with politeness, applauded the project; then
added, in a laughing way, 'You know you have chosen just the dullest
subject in Church-history. Now the Councils begin with the Nicene
Creed, and embrace nearly all doctrinal subjects whatever.'”
“My dear Sheffield,” said Charles, “you have fallen in with a
particular set or party of men yourself; very respectable, good men, I
don't doubt, but no fair specimens of the whole Church.”
“I don't bring them as authorities,” answered Sheffield, “but as
witnesses.”
“Still,” said Charles, “I know perfectly well, that there was a
controversy at the end of the last century between Bishop Horsley and
others, in which he brought out distinctly one part at least of the
Athanasian doctrine.”
“His controversy was not a defence of the Athanasian Creed, I know
well,” said Sheffield; “for the subject came into Upton's
Article-lecture; it was with Priestley; but, whatever it was, divines
would only think it all very fine, just as his 'Sermons on Prophecy.'
It is another question whether they would recognize the worth either of
the one or of the other. They receive the scholastic terms about the
Trinity just as they receive the doctrine that the Pope is Antichrist.
When Horsley says the latter, or something of the kind, good old
clergymen say, 'Certainly, certainly, oh yes, it's the old
Church-of-England doctrine,' thinking it right, indeed, to be
maintained, but not caring themselves to maintain it, or at most
professing it just when mentioned, but not really thinking about it
from one year's end to the other. And so with regard to the doctrine of
the Trinity, they say, 'the great Horsley,' 'the powerful Horsley;'
they don't indeed dispute his doctrine, but they don't care about it;
they look on him as a doughty champion, armed cap-à-pie, who has
put down dissent, who has cut off the head of some impudent
non-protectionist, or insane chartist, or spouter in a vestry, who,
under cover of theology, had run a tilt against tithes and
church-rates.”
“I can't think so badly of our present divines,” said Charles; “I
know that in this very place there are various orthodox writers, whom
no one would call party men.”
“Stop,” said Sheffield, “understand me, I was not speaking
against them. I was but saying that these anti-Athanasian views
were not unfrequent. I have been in the way of hearing a good deal on
the subject at my private tutor's, and have kept my eyes about me since
I have been here. The Bishop of Derby was a friend of Sheen's, my
private tutor, and got his promotion when I was with the latter; and
Sheen told me that he wrote to him on that occasion, 'What shall I
read? I don't know anything of theology.' I rather think he was
recommended, or proposed to read Scott's Bible.”
“It's easy to bring instances,” said Charles, “when you have all
your own way; what you say is evidently all an ex-parte
statement.”
“Take again Shipton, who died lately,” continued Sheffield; “what a
high position he held in the Church; yet it is perfectly well known
that he thought it a mistake to use the word 'Person' in the doctrine
of the Trinity. What makes this stranger is, that he was so very severe
on clergymen (Tractarians, for instance) who evade the sense of the
Articles. Now he was a singularly honest, straightforward man; he
despised money; he cared nothing for public opinion; yet he was a
Sabellian. Would he have eaten the bread of the Church, as it is
called, for a day, unless he had felt that his opinions were not
inconsistent with his profession as Dean of Bath, and Prebendary of
Dorchester? Is it not plain that he considered the practice of the
Church to have modified, to have re-interpreted its documents?”
“Why,” said Charles, “the practice of the Church cannot make black
white; or, if a sentence means yes, make it mean no. I won't deny that
words are often vague and uncertain in their sense, and frequently need
a comment, so that the teaching of the day has great influence in
determining their sense; but the question is, whether the
counter-teaching of every dean, every prebendary, every clergyman,
every bishop in the whole Church, could make the Athanasian Creed
Sabellian; I think not.”
“Certainly not,” answered Sheffield; “but the clergymen I speak of
simply say that they are not bound to the details of the Creed, only to
the great outline that there is a Trinity.”
“Great outline!” said Charles, “great stuff! an Unitarian would not
deny that. He, of course, believes in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit;
though he thinks the Son a creature, and the Spirit an influence.”
“Well, I don't deny,” said Sheffield, “that if Dean Shipton was a
sound member of the Church, Dr. Priestley might have been also. But my
doubt is, whether, if the Tractarian school had not risen, Priestley
might not have been, had he lived to this time, I will not say a
positively sound member, but sound enough for preferment.”
“If the Tractarian school had not risen! that is but saying
if our Church was other than it is. What is that school but a birth, an
offspring of the Church? and if the Church had not given birth to one
party of men for its defence, it would have given birth to another.”
“No, no,” said Sheffield, “I assure you the old school of doctrine
was all but run out when they began; and I declare I wish they had let
things alone. There was the doctrine of the Apostolical Succession; a
few good old men were its sole remaining professors in the Church; and
a great ecclesiastical personage, on one occasion, quite scoffed at
their persisting to hold it. He maintained the doctrine went out with
the non-jurors. 'You are so few,' he said, 'that we can count you.'”
Charles was not pleased with the subject, on various accounts. He
did not like what seemed to him an attack of Sheffield's upon the
Church of England; and, besides, he began to feel uncomfortable
misgivings and doubts whether that attack was not well founded, to
which he did not like to be exposed. Accordingly he kept silence, and,
after a short interval, attempted to change the subject; but
Sheffield's hand was in, and he would not be balked; so he presently
began again. “I have been speaking,” he said, “of the liberal section
of our Church. There are four parties in the Church. Of these the old
Tory, or country party, which is out-and-out the largest, has no
opinion at all, but merely takes up the theology or no-theology of the
day, and cannot properly be said to 'hold' what the Creed calls 'the
Catholic faith.' It does not deny it; it may not knowingly disbelieve
it; but it gives no signs of actually holding it, beyond the fact that
it treats it with respect. I will venture to say, that not a country
parson of them all, from year's end to year's end, makes once a year
what Catholics call 'an act of faith' in that special and very
distinctive mystery contained in the clauses of the Athanasian Creed.”
Then, seeing Charles looked rather hurt, he added, “I am not
speaking of any particular clergyman here or there, but of the great
majority of them. After the Tory party comes the Liberal; which also
dislikes the Athanasian Creed, as I have said. Thirdly, as to the
Evangelical; I know you have one of the Nos. of the 'Tracts for the
Times' about objective faith. Now that tract seems to prove that the
Evangelical party is implicitly Sabellian, and is tending to avow that
belief. This too has been already the actual course of Evangelical
doctrine both on the Continent and in America. The Protestants of
Geneva, Holland, Ulster, and Boston have all, I believe, become
Unitarians, or the like. Dr. Adam Clarke too, the celebrated Wesleyan,
held the distinguishing Sabellian tenet, as Doddridge is said to have
done before him. All this considered, I do think I have made out a good
case for my original assertion, that at this time of day it is a party
thing to go out of the way to read the Athanasian Creed.”
“I don't agree with you at all,” said Charles; “you say a great deal
more than you have a warrant to do, and draw sweeping conclusions from
slender premisses. This, at least, is what it seems to me. I wish too
you would not so speak of 'making out a case.' It is as if these things
were mere topics for disputation. And I don't like your taking the
wrong side; you are rather fond of doing so.”
“Reding,” answered Sheffield, “I speak what I think, and ever will
do so; I will be no party man. I don't attempt, like Vincent, to unite
opposites. He is of all parties, I am of none. I think I see pretty
well the hollowness of all.”
“O my dear Sheffield,” cried Charles, in distress, “think what you
are saying; you don't mean what you say. You are speaking as if you
thought that belief in the Athanasian Creed was a mere party opinion.”
Sheffield first was silent; then he said, “Well, I beg your pardon,
if I have said anything to annoy you, or have expressed myself
intemperately. But surely one has no need to believe what so many
people either disbelieve or disregard.”
The subject then dropped; and presently Carlton overtook them on the
farmer's pony, which he had borrowed.