4

preliminary accompaniments than from the ordinance itself. But if by the union proposed is meant an authoritative acknowledgment, on the part of the contending Churches, of the same external laws and creed, it is obvious that the contracting parties are not brought on the scene, even in the most distant manner. There is not alleged the faintest probability of such proposals emanating either on the one side from the Court of Rome, the Emperor of Russia, or the four Patriarchs of the East, or on the other side from the Crown and Parliament of England, or the Protestant sovereigns and synods of Scandinavia and Germany, or the numerous conventions and conferences of Nonconforming Churches in England and America.

Again, even if such an organic union were practicable, it would not be desirable, if urged and accepted on the grounds on which it is put forward in the 'Eirenicon.' A union between two or even three powerful Churches can hardly be said to be a union or reunion of Christendom, when it deliberately leaves out of consideration the whole range of Non-Episcopal bodies, which, if less powerful, are certainly integral parts of the whole, and have rendered services to Christianity not inferior, in their way, to any rendered by the See of Rome or of Canterbury. Still more questionable would such an exclusive union become if it were intended as 'a combination of forces' against those who were excluded. Such a union would be that of the Greek, Roman, and Anglican against the Presbyterian Churches, or of the Evangelical Alliance and the Gustavadolf-Verein against the Roman Catholics. Yet more questionable again would this be for us in England, inasmuch as whilst those who are to be included are communities more or less remote, those who would be excluded or attacked would be communities close at hand-the great Nonconformist bodies in England, the Presbyterian Churches in Scotland-as it has been truly said, bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh. More questionable still would such a scheme become, if it were not simply a union between the great Churches of Rome, and England, and Constantinople, in their entirety, but a union between kindred parties or systems of policy and belief within those Churches for the sake of repressing certain other parties or systems of policy and belief no less contained within each of them :-if it were intended as a combination to oppose those who in the Church of Rome hold the opinions recommended by Dupin and Simon in former times, and by Döllinger and Gratry now, or who in the Eastern Churches hold the opinions of St. Gregory of * See Froude's History of England, ch. xxxii., xxxiii.

Nyssa and St. Chrysostom-not to speak of some of the brightest ornaments of the modern Church of Russia,-or who in the Church of England hold the opinions of Archbishop Tillotson, Bishop Jeremy Taylor, and other distinguished divines dead or living, whom I need not more particularly name. All these, it may be inferred from passages in the Eirenicon,' compared with the well-known and strongly expressed views of its author in other works, he and those who think with him would desire to exclude, as a preliminary or as a consequence of any union at all. However good, as far as it goes, may be a combination for a particular purpose, it cannot, without considerable reserve, be called a scheme for a reunion of Christendom, when it excludes elements so vast, so beneficent, so pregnant with immediate advantages to our own time, and with remote advantages for the whole future of Christianity. Nor if it be thus proposed with a strategical or polemical intention,-'a sword,' as Dr. Newman expresses it, 'wreathed in myrtle,' 'an olive branch 'hurled out of a catapult,'-can it, without considerable reserve, be called an 'Eirenicon,' or Peace-offering.

Moreover, it may well be questioned whether the organic union even of the whole of Christendom, under the same external laws, would of itself produce the inward unity for the sake of which alone any external union can be desired. There was, in fact, no such spiritual unity under the joint rule of Rome and Byzantium, amidst the frightful controversies of the fifth century. Look at that most melancholy chapter in Gibbon's 'Decline and Fall,' the 47th. We should indeed despair of humanity if by the reunion of Christendom were meant the revival of such a tissue of discord and malignity as was then unfolded in the contentions between Athanasians and Arians, Nestorians and Eutychians, Monophysites and Monothelites.

The unity of Europe, such as it existed in the Middle Ages, belonged to an external framework, then believed to be as essential to the union of Christendom as the Papacy or the Episcopate, but which has since entirely passed away. The Holy Roman Empire was the united Christendom of the West. The Emperor, successor of Cæsar, was as essential to the idea of an organic Christendom, as the Pope, successor of Peter. The Empire has vanished, and no existing external institution can now supply its place.

Further, there are grounds of objection which may be justly entertained towards a closer union with the particular Church towards which the 'Eirenicon' draws us. We may freely

acknowledge the attractions which the Church of Rome always possesses for a large section of mankind, to whom the mere assumption of authority has a charm, such as is implied in Bossuet's celebrated appeal to Leibnitz :-' Permettez-moi de vous 'prier d'examiner sérieusement devant Dieu si vous avez quelque bon moyen d'empêcher l'Eglise de devenir éternellement variable en supposant qu'elle peut errer et changer ses décrets sur la foi' There is much force in this appeal. But first it may be remarked that in order to a calm consideration of the subject, we must remember the fact brought out by the very controversy which the Eirenicon' has awakened,-that, on the questions now most discussed, the Church of Rome has either not spoken at all, or has spoken in terms which, within its own pale, are openly questioned or contradicted. On the questions of the inspiration and interpretation of Scripture-of the duration of future punishment 5-of the relation of science to the Bible-of the effects of the progress of civilisation-of the salvation of Protestants and of heathens,—the authoritative decrees of the Roman Church are as yet silent, and the strong expressions used by the existing Pope on these subjects are either set aside. or explained away by persons who are still distinguished members or ministers of the Church over which he presides. And, secondly, we must bear in mind that there is a large section of Christendom which feels a positive repulsion from the claims to an infallible guidance, put forward with proofs so inadequate, and in which the answer of Leibnitz will awaken a far deeper glow of devotion and enthusiasm than the appeal of Bossuet : Il nous plaît, Monseigneur, d'être de cette Eglise toujours 'mouvante et éternellement variable.' In this belief, that the high destinies of the Church at large depend on its constantly keeping pace with the moving order of Divine Providence and with the increasing light of ages, many sincere and enlightened members both of the Greek and Roman Churches would gladly join; and they would therefore regret any step which should fix the existing system of their own day as an eternal and unchangeable ordinance. And unquestionably this is the conviction of a powerful minority in our own Church.

It is not, therefore, on the ground of the probable success or intrinsic excellence of the particular scheme proposed that the Eirenicon' deserves a favourable consideration.

But it is the blessing of any attempt at peace that the indirect advantages are often greater than the direct advan

* See this well brought out in the Christian Remembrancer, December 1864, pp. 449-452.

tages. Any friendly move carries with it a certain atmosphere of friendliness and charity. Leibnitz was raised above himself by his correspondence with Bossuet; and when his attempts to unite the Protestants and Catholics failed, he entered with scarcely less ardour into the attempt to unite Protestants with Protestants. 'It is not,' as Philip Henry well said, 'the actual differences of Christian men that do the mischief, but the mismanagement of those differences. And by a better management of those differences, by a better understanding between all the different branches of Christendom, without any external amalgamation or formal reconciliation, it is to be hoped that a unity will spring up-it may be, to be realised only in some far distant age, but to be begun in our own- more like to that unity of which the Bible speaks, than any which the Church has yet witnessed.

Before speaking at length of this true unity, let us notice the three important aspects in which, as indirectly contributing to this blessed end, the work before us chiefly deserves its title of an Eirenicon.'

I. The Eirenicon' approaches the differences between two estranged bodies with the unmistakable intention of Example making as much as possible of their points of agreeof modera- ment, as little as possible of their points of diffetion in theological rence. And this disposition, it may be from accilanguage. dental causes, so far from provoking any attack, has rather met with commendation. It is the rarity of this phenomenon in Christian controversy which renders its appearance doubly valuable, from whatever quarter it comes. The general rule amongst theological combatants has been-and our own Church and our own time form no exception-that the first duty is to resist our supposed adversary, however excellent in other respects-if he is outside our own pale, by widening the chasm between us—if he is inside our own pale, by trying to eject him from it. I have been told of the speech of a Free Church minister in Scotland, uttered with the fervency of a pious ejaculation-'Oh that we were all baptized into the spirit of the disruption!' Exaggerated as it sounds, this truly expresses the common ecclesiastical feeling. The 'world,' as we call it, has for the most part risen above this curious state of mind. But there are many in what we call the 'Church' who still think it a sacred privilege and duty, still regard the actual expulsion and separation of men from men, churches from churches, as a thing not to be avoided, if possible, but, if possible, to be enforced on the smallest provocation.

In the face of this, we have here a book which approaches a Church by most Englishmen regarded as full of errorregarded by the author himself as having sanctioned, in the most recent and emphatic manner, errors of a very grave kind— with no expression of bitterness or contempt or hostility. We know that copious vocabulary of abuse with which the writings. of Protestant divines abound, even those belonging to the same school as that of the learned author of this book, even in formularies sanctioned more or less by the ecclesiastical authorities of our own Church-Antichrist-Babylon-the Woman on the Seven Hills-corrupt-idolatrous-blasphemous fablesPapist-Romanist-Popish treachery-hellish malice-detestable enormities, &c., &c., &c. Not one of these occurs in this treatise, not even when lamenting that the Virgin Mary is described as 'superior to God,' or that the Holy Ghost is described ' as taken into a quasi-hypostatic union with each successive Pope,' though he were as wicked as Alexander VI., or as unwise as at least more than one that could be named in that high and important office. The doctrines to which objection is made are set forth in its pages clearly but calmly, in the words of their own framers, with an evident effort to appreciate their point of view, with every desire to suffer them to explain to the utmost,' 'to maximise our points of resem'blance and to minimise their points of difference,' 'to dwell on our real agreements instead of their differences of wording,' 'to point out how much there is in common even where there is divergence.'

Considering what the 'No Popery' feeling has been in England; considering its intensity, its bitterness, its effects in the dismemberment of households and nations, and in driving Protestants by reaction into the Church of Rome; considering the violence in which some of the best of our divines have indulged themselves in speaking of Roman Catholics, to a degree far below the calm and measured language employed by our men of letters and our statesmen-considering all this, it seems to me a matter of sincere congratulation, not only that a book has been written (from whatever motive), speaking temperately of the Roman Catholic opinions which we condemn, but that the book has not excited any strong remonstrance on this point from any but the extremest partisans of the opposite school.

But this is a very small part of the benefit which may accrue. What is approved as a mode of dealing with one set of opinions from which we dissent, or with one class of our fellow-citizens or fellow-Christians from whom we are separated,