'The Reformation is the object of their bitterest dislike': a late 19th century Old High critique of Anglo-catholicism

In his 1872 primary visitation charge to the clergy and churchwardens of the Diocese of Peterborough, Bishop William Connor Magee set forth characteristically High Church concerns: "reviving daily Service", "the keeping of the great days in the Christian year", monthly Communion as "the minimum of Eucharistic privilege which should be provided in every Church", "Weekly communion [as] that at which we should all of us aim".

Magee, however, was certainly no Tractarian. He was, rather, a late 19th century representative of what we can call the Old High tradition. This becomes particularly evident when, in the charge, he offers a robust critique of advanced Anglo-catholicism, what he terms "the exaggeration of the Catholic element" in the Church of England:

This tendency of a false theory of Catholicity is only too plainly illustrated amongst us at this moment. The party in our Church which claims, I must say invidiously, the exclusive title of Catholic, asserts this theory in its extremest form. I think I do no injustice to the leaders of this school of thought, when I state their theory thus. There is and must ever be one visible Holy and Catholic Church. To this Church our Lord has by His promise guaranteed infallibility. The voice of this Church, whether uttered in her General Councils or in the form of Catholic consent, is infallible, and, therefore, necessarily binding on all particular or local churches. So much so that any law of any local Church which contravenes the decrees of any General Council, or sets aside any practice or rite which has ever obtained Catholic assent is ipso facto invalid, and not only may but ought to be disregarded and disobeyed by every true churchman whose allegiance to his own Church is subordinate to his prior duty of allegiance to the Church Catholic. 

Consistently with this theory, those who hold it avow their desire to restore in our Church all pre- Reformation doctrines and usages, mediaeval Christianity being for them that form both of doctrine and of ritual which most exactly fulfils the conditions of Catholic consent. Naturally and necessarily, too, the Reformation which disowned and rejected many both of these doctrines and practices, is the object of their bitterest dislike, a dislike which no words of theirs seem strong enough to express. Naturally, and necessarily, too, such persons resent all claim on behalf of their own Church for that right to make these changes of which the Reformation was the assertion. 

This in their view is "the frightful and sterile blunder of Anglicanism"; and those who maintain it and who show themselves loyal to the Prayer-book as it is, are held up to scorn as "mere Anglicans," "intellectual Cretins who cannot count beyond thirty-nine"; while the deliberate defiance of the plainest rules of our Church, the adoption of ceremonies which she has not only not enjoined but has positively forbidden, the teaching of doctrines which not even those who teach them can so much as pretend are not rejected by her, are gloried in as " revivals of Catholic principles" and "assertions of Catholic privileges." Naturally, too, those who claim this "Catholic heritage" of doctrine and discipline resort to the Church of Rome, as that portion of Christendom which has most faithfully preserved all mediaeval traditions, as their teacher and their model on these points.

If one wanted a short, effective summary of the heart of the Old High rejection of Anglo-catholicism, this is it. At its core is the Anglo-catholic repudiation of the Reformation. This is the crucial, defining distinction between the two traditions. The Old High tradition affirms and receives the Reformation; Anglo-catholicism denies and repudiates it. As Magee states, the Reformation "is the object of their bitterest dislike". 

Those of us who are Irish Anglicans will be particularly intrigued by the language Magee uses regarding the Reformation: 

the Reformation which disowned and rejected many both of these doctrines and practices.

Magee - the son of a Church of Ireland cleric, the grandson of an Archbishop of Dublin, receiving orders in the Church of Ireland before taking up an appointment in the Church of England in the late 1840s - is here quite clearly echoing the Church of Ireland's Declaration of 1870:

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

Magee, therefore, is a reminder of how this clause from the Declaration of 1870, often dismissed by some contemporary Anglicans as an unrepresentative statement, the result of the perceived 'oddness' of Irish Anglicanism, is actually the standard Old High understanding. It is, to use a phrase suggested by Magee, 'mere Anglicanism'. 

In the final paragraph of the above extract, Magee also highlights another significant aspect of the reason for the Old High rejection of Anglo-catholicism: the latter party forsaking "loyalty to the Prayer Book" in favour of Roman liturgical and doctrinal norms. This is the Anglo-catholic preference for Roman forms, ceremonies, devotions, and liturgies, in place of the native piety of the Prayer Book and those devotional authors nurtured by the Prayer Book. As can be seen from Magee's words, the Old High heart rests and rejoices in the 'mere Anglicanism' of Prayer Book and Articles, in stark contrast to those Anglo-catholics who have the Roman church for "their teacher and their model". For Magee, it is the former who are - to quote the Preface of 1662 - "sober, peaceable, and truly conscientious Sons of the Church of England".