"The visible church is not a mere multitude": Bishop Phillpotts' 1842 Visitation Charge and Article 19

Today we continue consideration of the charge given in 1842 by Henry Phillpotts, Bishop of Exeter 1831-69. This is part of the series of weekly posts from a rich seam of Old High teaching, the responses to Tract XC by Old High bishops in the visitation charges of the early 1840s.  The focus of these posts is not so much on the well-known critique of Tract XC articulated in these charges but, rather, on what these visitation charges reveal about the teaching, piety, concerns, and vitality of the Old High tradition nearly a decade after the emergence of the Oxford Movement. 

Phillpotts provides a robust Old High view of the the visible Church: "the true Christian life is not an individual, but a corporate life". What is significant, however, is that he sees no need to couch this in terms beyond the Formularies (a stark contrast with the Tractarians). He invokes Article 19 and provides a Reformed Catholic account of the visible Church which would be as equally recognisable to the Lutheran and Reformed traditions. We might also note in this context his use of the phrase "Holy Supper".

This extract is also prefaced by a quotation from Hooker: 

in Him we actually are, by our actual incorporation into that society which hath Him for its head, and doth make together with him one body; for which cause, by virtue of that mystical conjunction, we are of Him, and in Him, even as though our very flesh and bones should be made continuate with His.

At a time when the Tractarians were becoming increasingly of the view that Hooker was unsatisfactory, this was a reaffirmation of a traditional Old High source and influence.

Here, in other words, we see the Old High tradition giving fine expression to a magisterial Protestant vision of the visible Church.

The "life" of this mystical body is, indeed, "hid with Christ in God;" yet the body itself is visible here on earth, in the doctrine which Christ delivered to it, in the Sacraments which he instituted, in the "pastors and teachers, whom He gave, for the perfecting of the Saints, for the work of the Ministry, for the edifying of the Body of Christ, till" the number of the elect shall be accomplished, and the Church attain its appointed growth; and so "we all come in the unity of the Faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ."

Meanwhile, can we doubt what is the duty of every Christian towards the particular Church, in which God's mercy has assigned his lot? To adhere to it with all thankfulness and meekness, "to obey them which have the rule over him, and submit himself," "esteeming them very highly in love for their work's sake;" to "love the brotherhood," to hold communion in all acts of worship, above all, in that the highest of all, the Holy Supper of the Lord, which is the very golden cord of unity, binding together in one the whole Body of Christ on earth;" for we, being many, are one bread and one body; for we are all partakers of that one bread" ...

"The visible Church" is not a mere multitude; it is the catus fidelium - "a congregation of faithful men in which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments are duly administered." Such is the description of the Church in our 19th Article; agreeably to the description of it given in the Word of God. "They that gladly received the Word" of Peter, bidding them to "save themselves from this untoward generation," the world, "were baptized," "and they continued steadfastly in the teaching of the Apostles, and in the fellowship, and in the breaking of the bread (manifestly the Bread of the Eucharist), and in the prayers" - manifestly the common prayers of the body.