Should the Government and Country so far forget their GOD as to cast off the Church, to deprive it of its temporal honours and substance, on what will you rest the claim of respect and attention which you make upon your flocks? Hitherto you have been upheld by your birth, your education, your wealth, your connexions; should these secular advantages cease, on what must CHRIST'S Ministers depend? The question was asked by Newman in Tract One. It carries the implication, of course, that the pre-1833 Church of England and Ireland was dependent upon its established status and that without this status it had little or no theological rationale for its ministry.
Tract One is a quite brilliant piece of ecclesiastical propaganda, significantly contributing to the perverse image of Georgian Anglicanism which the Tractarians - with assistance from low church evangelicals - would enthusiastically promote. However, as laudable Practice has previously suggested, such an account of pre-1833 Anglicanism is woefully inaccurate. There are an abundance of sources which demonstrate that that dominant Old High tradition in pre-1833 Anglicanism had a lively understanding of what Newman termed "your Divine commission" (e.g. consider Horsley in 1790 and Spry in 1816).
Last week, we commenced a new series of posts considering extracts from sermons from a variety of associates of the Hackney Phalanx, beginning with John Lonsdale's sermon preached at the 1827 episcopal consecration of Hugh Percy, Bishop of Rochester. Lonsdale's sermon is yet another example of the Old High emphasis on the divine commission of the Church's ministers:
Would to God, that it might never be forgotten, that our commission is not the less certainly divine, because it is evidenced to be such, by moral, and not sensible proofs: and that its validity cannot possibly be impaired by any personal defects of the commissioners! Would to God that we might have full reason to apply to our brethren the Apostle's eucharistical language, "For this cause thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye received the word of God, which ye heard of us, ye received it, not as the word of men, but (as it is in truth) the word of God; which effectually worketh also in you that believe!"
In other words, despite Newman's implication, he was saying nothing new. In the pre-1833 Church of England and Ireland, the authority of the church's ministers was recognised as a divine gift, not dependent upon the state. Indeed, Lonsdale uses the precise words employed by Newman:
our divine commission.
The sermon goes on to explicitly address establishment, defending it on the grounds that it serves the Church's mission in the world:
It is true, that, as exercising our holy calling in the world; (and our Master himself expressly disclaimed the desire that his chosen ones should be "taken out of the world" ) as being persuaded too, that a general, though cautious and restrained, intercourse with it is essentially requisite to give full scope to our usefulness; we do seek such a station there, as may facilitate our access, and recommend our
ministry, to all classes of society; for it is for the benefit of all that we have received our charge. And since it is mere idleness, or something worse, to draw a strict comparison between present circumstances and those of the Apostolic age, we would appeal to the thinking, and the wise, whether that object be most likely to be attained, in a state of highly advanced civilization like ours, by the assignment of a depressed condition and bare maintenance to the clergy; or of such an honourable rank, and competent provision, as, while it enables them to stand unabashed in the presence of the highest, may at the same time not disqualify them for free and kindly converse with the lowest. It is true too, that we claim for a few of our order place even among the nobles of the realm: but we claim it for them, only that they may thereby be empowered more effectually to promote the spiritual interests of that Church, in which they bear rule, and which looks to them as, under her divine Head, the chief instruments of her support and guardianship.
Establishment thus understood cannot, therefore, be regarded in any way as a source of the Church's ministry and authority - it is, rather, "the mere outworks of our Sion":
We do not forget (it would be strange indeed if we did) that Christ's "kingdom is not of this world," often as the plain sense of that saying has been perverted: but we remember also, that it is a kingdom of grace upon earth, before it becomes a kingdom of glory in heaven: and that, while it continues such, earthly means may, and ought to be employed, for the enlargement of its boundaries, and the extension of its benefits. God forbid however, that, while we are intent upon the means, we should lose sight of
the end which hallows them; and should mistake the mere outworks of our Sion, for the heaven-built citadel of its strength! Woe, we are well assured, awaits the secularized minister, who is content to
merge in temporal distinctions the title, in which his pattern, St. Paul, gloried, of a "servant of Jesus Christ."
Lonsdale's sermon exemplifies how Newman's call in Tract One, rather than being a new, stirring call, was merely a repetition of well-established, influential Old High teaching. What made Newman's words distinctive was his suggestion that the Church of England and Ireland was somehow reliant on its established status as the means of justifying its ministry. This was nothing more than Tractarian propaganda. As Lonsdale's sermon demonstrates, a lively, vibrant understanding of the divine commission of the Church's ministers animated pre-1833 Anglicanism.
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