'Her truly Catholic heritage': a late 19th century Old High critique of Anglo-catholicism

In today's post we come to a very fine Old High exposition of the catholicity of the Church of England, by William Connor Magee, Bishop of Peterborough, in his 1872 primary visitation charge. Magee reminds us that these claims to catholicity are not dependent upon general councils or, indeed, even the Creeds, for councils (as the Article 21 declares) "may err, and sometimes have erred", while the Creeds (in the words of Article 8) are received because "they may be proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture": 

So far from asserting the infallibility of general councils, she [i.e. the Church of England] categorically denies it. "General Councils, she declares, may err, and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining unto God." So far from admitting her subjection to their decrees "in things necessary to salvation," she declares that these "have neither strength nor authority," unless it may be declared (i.e. clearly shown) that they be " taken out of Holy Scripture." Even the Creeds she receives, not because they have the authority of Councils nor yet of Catholic consent, but because "they may be proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture," the one only absolutely infallible and supreme authority in matters of faith which she recognizes. 

Of particular significance here, of course, is Magee's unambiguous and unembarrassed affirmation of the Articles of Religion, an Old High characteristic entirely at adds with Tractarian, Anglo-catholic, and Ritualist approaches. Hence, Magee has no qualms about affirming the central declaration of the Reformation protest, that the Holy Scriptures are "the one only absolutely infallible and supreme authority in matters of faith". The desire of the inheritors of the Movement of 1833 to step away from or explicitly reject this affirmation signifies the extent to which that Movement was a definitive rupture with the Old High tradition

Moving from matters of faith to ceremonies, Magee again invokes the Articles of Religion (Article 34) against Ritualist notions of an authority attached to 'catholic' ceremonies irrespective of the canonical and rubrical directions of the Church of England:

In matters of ritual her assertion of her own independent and inherent authority is even more clear and emphatic. "Every particular or National Church," she maintains, "hath authority to ordain, change, or abolish ceremonies or rites of the Church" (i.e. of the Church Catholic), "ordained only by man's authority, so that all things be done to edifying." And in her Preface "Of ceremonies, why some be abolished and some retained," she still more clearly and fully asserts this right, while defining the conditions under which she exercises it. One rule, and one only, she there lays down, as that which is to regulate "all things done in the Church," in "ceremonials of human institution," and that is "edification." Whatever ceremonies, even though "originally of goodly intent and purpose devised," may have ceased to fulfil this end, she claims the right to change, or, if needful, "to put away." This is a claim which goes to the root of the theory of Catholic assent as the rule of ritual; the most ancient and universal of rites — not having the authority of Holy Writ for its perpetual observance — becoming on this principle a mere Nehustan [a reference to II Kings 18:4], a thing to be utterly abolished, if it should have become at any time so "abused to error or superstition" as that "the abuse could not be taken away, the thing itself remaining." 

Again we can detect a very distinct echo by Magee - an Irishman by birth - of the Church of Ireland's 1870 Declaration:

The Church of Ireland, as a Reformed and Protestant Church, doth hereby reaffirm its constant witness against all those innovations in doctrine and worship [emphasis added], whereby the Primitive Faith hath been from time to time defaced or overlaid, and which at the Reformation this Church did disown and reject.

Also noteworthy is Magee's use of Cranmer's 'Of Ceremonies', a stark contrast with the outright rejection of Cranmer's approach to ceremonies by the Ritualists and succeeding generations of Anglo-catholics.

Concluding this portion of his visitation charge, Magee draws together his statements on matters of faith and on ceremonies by setting forth the Old High conviction that self-governing national episcopal churches, under the Scriptures, are the right and proper expression of the "unity of the Catholic Church":

The unity of the Catholic Church, therefore, clearly, according to the teaching of our Church, does not consist either in a central infallible authority or in the identity of any rites or ceremonies not expressly enjoined in Scripture; but in the common possession by many independent Churches of the four unities — of the Faith, the Word, the Sacraments, and the divinely appointed Ministry. To reject or to lose any one of these would be to sever herself from the Church Catholic. But short of this, she claims most clearly and unhesitatingly the right of every Church National to self-government and self-reform in all things pertaining to edification. And it was in the vindication for her of this her truly "Catholic heritage" of self-rule, subject only to the authority of God's word, that the Reformation was of such vital importance to our Church.

What is perhaps most striking about this extract from Magee is how it provides, in the latter part of the 19th century, a confident statement of the Old High understanding of the catholic nature of the Church of England, nearly forty years after the beginning of the Oxford Movement. This testifies to the continued vitality of the Old High tradition as the 19th century progressed.