Appendix A, p. 22.

In the Lecture as originally delivered, reference was made to the circumstance that Mr. Comper's book bore to be published by the desire of Dr. Wordsworth, Bishop of St. Andrews in the Scottish Episcopal Church, to whom it was dedicated. This reference is now withdrawn, as Bishop Wordsworth has explained that he desires his sentiments to be gathered from what he has himself written within the last twelve years, and that he and Mr. Comper are not now to be regarded as wholly agreeing on these matters. Lest it should be thought, however, that Mr. Comper's standing in his Church is not such as to warrant my taking him as representative of any considerable section of it, I may refer to the proceedings which took place in November, 1870, in connection with the opening of the Mission Chapel of St. Margaret, Aberdeen. I do not, of course, make those who attended responsible for all Mr. Comper's views. But no one can read the proceedings without drawing the conclusion that Mr. Comper is by no means an isolated and exceptional person in his Church, but stands in the central stream of its life and work. All I have heard of him leads me to believe him to be a very earnest and laborious man.

In connection with this subject I may add a few sentences. It does not surprise us that persons persuaded in their own minds in favour of Episcopacy should represent it as a duty to be in fellowship with a or the Bishop, and should represent the non-performance of that duty as involving, ordinarily, some degree of sin. For, besides invincible ignorance, there is ignorance which, though real, and in an important sense honest, is culpable. When a Prelatist charges such ignorance, and therefore some sin, on me, or I on him, it need scandalise neither of us. Every Christian, I suppose, remains culpably ignorant of something he ought to know, great or small, in doctrine or duty. For the forgiveness of such sins we pray daily, while we pray also for the more single eye and the humbler heart to which all things will become more clear. But what does surprise us is, that an honest difference of judgment regarding the number and relation of office- page 94 bearers whom Christ appointed to watch over His Church—a difference involving possibly some degree of sin on one side or other—should be conceived to place either party in an exceptional or critical relation to salvation, or to the care of the great Shepherd.

It does not greatly alter the feelings of surprise on our part, though it softens the phraseology on the other side, when it is represented in this way, viz., that those who do not adhere to a bishop may be recognised as members of the one Church in a state of schism, more or less culpable according to circumstances; but that their Churches are not true Churches, have not promised grace in the ordinances they administer, are null, in short. Let it be considered how much importance those who hold this theory attach to true Church ministration; and then let it be considered that, according to them, all this most needful grace has been by Christ our Lord suspended on an empirical arrangement, so doubtful in its evidence that the Scripture proof of it is given up as hopeless by many even of the Episcopalians! We on our side are withheld from erecting any of our "points" into corresponding importance, not by any doubt about their authenticity, but by the view we take of our Lord's way of dealing with men in matters of salvation. We own personal grace wherever persons are inwardly believing to Christ and adhering to Him. We own true Churches wherever societies of professing believers, claiming and exercising a Church state in professed subjection to Christ, are holding forth the main fundamentals of the faith, and doing the main things which He has commanded to be done in and by Churches. We admit that there may be doubtful cases both of persons and Churches. And we hold that different degrees of sin attach to the mistakes, defects, and omissions both of the one and of the other.

So in particular of unity, which is greatly relied on as a characteristic of Christ's Church, and so as necessitating the conclusions at which our High Church friends arrive. We acknowledge that the visible Church ought to be one. We acknowledge that breaches which interrupt fellowship imply sin somewhere. We acknowledge that in proportion as they are recklessly or wantonly made, or maintained under manifestly carnal influences, in the same proportion the guilt of schism is incurred or enhanced But we refuse to see unity only in unity of constitution. We maintain that not all unity, not all visible unity, has failed, even when breaches have taken place which imply sin, and are attended with evil. We maintain that the page 95 worst and truly fatal kind of schism may be still far off, even when men, under misapprehensions, withdraw from a scripturally constituted Church. For instance, assuming Presbyterianism alone to be scriptural, we hold that if the inhabitants of one-half of Scotland should withdraw peaceably from it, on the mistaken ground that Scripture required the Church to be episcopally constituted, and should take means to have their Church so constituted and governed, they would be breaking unity on their part, not without some sin in their honest mistake. Yet then sin might have extremely little of the spirit or of the offence of schism; and their peaceable separation might leave, in a large measure, unity still untouched; not merely inward unity, but a very visible and palpable unity—a unity serving, not perfectly indeed, yet powerfully, towards the great ends for which Christ appointed His Church to be one. If, however (still supposing Presbyterianism alone to be scriptural), we proceeded, on the ground of their mistake and peaceable withdrawal, to charge them with a fatal breach of unity, to unchurch them, and to deny the validity of the ordinances they had procured to be administered, while they acknowledged the validity of ours, then in that case we should be the true schismatics, the real and effective breakers of a unity which the others had only somewhat defaced and obscured. We should be so although, by supposition, scriptural and right in our order. For always in Christ's kingdom the fundamental and vital precedes in importance the external and politic.

All this is somewhat away from the subject of my Lectures, for Dean Stanley, notoriously, has no sympathy with the High Church views which I am characterising. But I think it worth while to say so much for this reason. All men who attach importance to Church duties will be found at times feeling and speaking strongly on what they regard as inexcusable or disgraceful failures, perhaps treacheries, in connection with them. In particular circumstances they will think themselves justified in strongly charging sin, and calling on men to have no fellowship with those sins. Presbyterians have often done so. But it is one thing to charge sin, even in this strong and peremptory manner; it is another thing to deny standing in the visible Church merely because Church duties have not been rightly apprehended or performed. When, in such cases, the language has become very strong and sweeping, it has generally been because it was felt that a dereliction of duty, a moral baseness, could be page 96 charged, which inferred (under any Church constitution) estrangement from prosperous spiritual life until it was repented.