Loss and Gain Part 14

"Yes, certainly, if necessary," said Bateman.

"And how am I to sign as a Master, and when I am ordained?" asked Charles.

"That's what I mean by fidgeting," answered Bateman. "You are not content with your day; you are reaching forward to live years hence."

Charles laughed. "It isn't quite that," he said, "I was but testing your advice; however, there's some truth in it." And he changed the subject.

They talked awhile on indifferent matters; but on a pause Charles's thoughts fell back again to the Articles. "Tell me, Bateman," he said, "as a mere matter of curiosity, how _you_ subscribed when you took your degree."

"Oh, I had no difficulty at all," said Bateman; "the examples of Bull and Pearson were enough for me."

"Then you signed on faith."

"Not exactly, but it was that thought which smoothed all difficulties."

"Could you have signed without it?"

"How can you ask me the question? of course."

"Well, do tell me, then, what was your _ground_?"

"Oh, I had many grounds. I can't recollect in a moment what happened some time ago."

"Oh, then it was a matter of difficulty; indeed, you said so just now."

"Not at all: my only difficulty was, not about myself, but how to state the matter to other people."

"What! some one suspected you?"

"No, no; you are quite mistaken. I mean, for instance, the Article says that we are justified by faith only; now the Protestant sense of this statement is point blank opposite to our standard divines: the question was, what I was to say when asked _my_ sense of it."

"I understand," said Charles; "now tell me how you solved the problem."

"Well, I don't deny that the Protestant sense is heretical," answered Bateman; "and so is the Protestant sense of many other things in the Articles; but then we need not take them in the Protestant sense."

"Then in what sense?"

"Why, first," said Bateman, "we need not take them in any sense at all.

Don't smile; listen. Great authorities, such as Laud or Bramhall, seem to have considered that we only sign the Articles as articles of peace; not as really holding them, but as not opposing them. Therefore, when we sign the Articles, we only engage not to preach against them."

Reding thought; then he said: "Tell me, Bateman, would not this view of subscription to the Articles let the Unitarians into the Church?"

Bateman allowed it would, but the Liturgy would still keep them out.

Charles then went on to suggest that _they_ would take the Liturgy as a Liturgy of peace too. Bateman began again.

"If you want some tangible principle," he said, "for interpreting Articles and Liturgy, I can give you one. You know," he continued, after a short pause, "what it is _we_ hold? Why, we give the Articles a Catholic interpretation."

Charles looked inquisitive.

"It is plain," continued Bateman, "that no doc.u.ment can be a dead letter; it must be the expression of some mind; and the question here is, _whose_ is what may be called the voice which speaks the Articles.

Now, if the Bishops, Heads of houses, and other dignitaries and authorities were unanimous in their religious views, and one and all said that the Articles meant this and not that, they, as the imponents, would have a right to interpret them; and the Articles would mean what those great men said they meant. But they do not agree together; some of them are diametrically opposed to others. One clergyman denies Apostolical Succession, another affirms it; one denies the Lutheran justification, another maintains it; one denies the inspiration of Scripture, a second holds Calvin to be a saint, a third considers the doctrine of sacramental grace a superst.i.tion, a fourth takes part with Nestorius against the Church, a fifth is a Sabellian. It is plain, then, that the Articles have no sense at all, if the collective voice of Bishops, Deans, Professors, and the like is to be taken. They cannot supply what schoolmen call the _form_ of the Articles. But perhaps the writers themselves of the Articles will supply it? No; for, first, we don't know for certain who the writers were; and next, the Articles have gone through so many hands, and so many mendings, that some at least of the original authors would not like to be responsible for them. Well, let us go to the Convocations which ratified them: but they, too, were of different sentiments; the seventeenth century did not hold the doctrine of the sixteenth. Such is the state of the case. On the other hand, _we_ say that if the Anglican Church be a part of the one Church Catholic, it must, from the necessity of the case, hold Catholic doctrine. Therefore, the whole Catholic Creed, the acknowledged doctrine of the Fathers, of St. Ignatius, St. Cyprian, St. Augustin, St. Ambrose, is the _form_, is the one true sense and interpretation of the Articles.

They may be ambiguous in themselves; they may have been worded with various intentions by the individuals concerned in their composition; but these are accidents; the Church knows nothing of individuals; she interprets herself."

Reding took some time to think over this. "All this," he said, "proceeds on the fundamental principle that the Church of England is an integral part of that visible body of which St. Ignatius, St. Cyprian, and the rest were Bishops; according to the words of Scripture, 'one body, one faith.'"

Bateman a.s.sented; Charles proceeded: "Then the Articles must not be considered primarily as teaching; they have no one sense in themselves; they are confessedly ambiguous: they are compiled from heterogeneous sources; but all this does not matter, for all must be interpreted by the teaching of the Catholic Church."

Bateman agreed in the main, except that Reding had stated the case rather too strongly.

"But what if their letter _contradicts_ a doctrine of the Fathers? am I to force the letter?"

"If such a case actually happened, the theory would not hold," answered Bateman; "it would only be a gross quibble. You can in no case sign an Article in a sense which its words will not bear. But, fortunately, or rather providentially, this is not the case; we have merely to explain ambiguities, and harmonize discrepancies. The Catholic interpretation does no greater violence to the text than _any other_ rule of interpretation will be found to do."

"Well, but I know nothing of the Fathers," said Charles; "others too are in the same condition; how am I to learn practically to interpret the Articles?"

"By the Prayer Book; the Prayer Book is the voice of the Fathers."

"How so?"

"Because the Prayer Book is confessedly ancient, while the Articles are modern."

Charles kept silence again. "It is very plausible," he said; he thought on. Presently he asked: "Is this a _received_ view?"

"_No_ view is received," said Bateman; "the Articles themselves are received, but there is no authoritative interpretation of them at all.

That's what I was saying just now; Bishops and Professors don't agree together."

"Well," said Charles, "is it a _tolerated_ view?"

"It has certainly been strongly opposed," answered Bateman; "but it has never been condemned."

"That is no answer," said Charles, who saw by Bateman's manner how the truth lay. "Does any one Bishop hold it? did any one Bishop ever hold it? has it ever been formally admitted as tenable by any one Bishop? is it a view got up to meet existing difficulties, or has it an historical existence?"

Bateman could give but one answer to these questions, as they were successively put to him.

"I thought so," said Charles, when he had made his answer: "I know, of course, whose view you are putting before me, though I never heard it drawn out before. It is specious, certainly: I don't see but it might have done, had it been tolerably sanctioned; but you have no sanction to show me. It is, as it stands, a mere theory struck out by individuals.

Our Church _might_ have adopted this mode of interpreting the Articles; but from what you tell me, it certainly _has not_ done so. I am where I was."

CHAPTER XVI.

The thought came across Reding whether perhaps, after all, what is called Evangelical Religion was not the true Christianity: its professors, he knew, were active and influential, and in past times had been much persecuted. Freeborn had surprised and offended him at Bateman's breakfast-party before the Vacation; yet Freeborn had a serious manner about him, and perhaps he had misunderstood him. The thought, however, pa.s.sed away as suddenly as it came, and perhaps would not have occurred to him again, when an accident gave him some data for determining the question.

One afternoon he was lounging in the Parks, gazing with surprise on one of those extraordinary lights for which the neighbourhood of Oxford is at that season celebrated, and which, as the sun went down, was colouring Marston, Elsfield, and their half-denuded groves with a pale gold-and-brown hue, when he found himself overtaken and addressed by the said Freeborn _in propria persona_. Freeborn liked a _tete-a-tete_ talk much better than a dispute in a party; he felt himself at more advantage in long leisurely speeches, and he was soon put out of breath when he had to bolt-out or edge-in his words amid the ever-varying voices of a breakfast-table. He thought the present might be a good opportunity of doing good to a poor youth who did not know chalk from cheese, and who, by his means, might be, as he would word it, "savingly converted." So they got into conversation, talked of Willis's step, which Freeborn called awful; and, before Charles knew where he was, he found himself asking Freeborn what he meant by "faith."

"Faith," said Freeborn, "is a Divine gift, and is the instrument of our justification in G.o.d's sight. We are all by nature displeasing to Him, till He justifies us freely for Christ's sake. Faith is like a hand, appropriating personally the merits of Christ, who is our justification.

Now, what can we want more, or have more, than those merits? Faith, then, is everything, and does everything for us. You see, then, how important it is to have a right view about justification by faith only.