Contents of Lecture 9. THE designations, Broad Church and Independency, traced to their historical origins-Broad Church an unfortunate name in face of Christ's warning against the "broad way"-The true idea of Independency, local catholicism-This idea as yet unrealized through the connexional views of other Christians-The most recent development of the Broad Church the most dangerous enemy to Independency-Classification of the earlier and later Broad Churchmanships-The just praise due to the earlier school of Whately and Arnold-The recent degeneracy of the party in its theological aspect-Statement of their present pretensions as advocates, par excellence, of liberal theology-Originating causes of the destructive tendency in religious faiths-The influence of the irreligious scientific party-Estimate of their claims by Professor Tait, of Edinburgh -Tait's flagellation of Mr. Froude-Position of Independency during the era of the new Broad Churchmanship-Its steady maintenance of the fundamental doctrine of Revelation on law and grace, with the reasons of it-Temper of the extreme type of Broad Church criticism exemplified in its treatment of the Fourth Gospel-Happy traditions of reverence and freedom united in Independency--Their effect seen both in its orthodoxy and reputed "heresies"-The Scripture not outgrown by human development-The Independent doctrine on the Church an inference from the first principles of the spiritual life—Its idea of regeneration, based on Apostolic teaching, lies at the foundation of its Church doctrine-The influence of Broad Church subscription on national morality-The political aspect of the party as the chief abettors of establishments - Their idea of comprehension - The rejection of this scheme by Nonconformists-Supposed consequences of disestablishment -Circumstances in modern life fitted to diminish alarm at the prospect. IX. BROAD CHURCH DOCTRINE AND INDEPENDENCY. as HE names popularly assigned to religious parties are seldom to be taken as adequate descriptions, much less as definitions. Whether originally given in self-praise by the parties themselves, in dis-praise by their opponents, or simply affixed by uncritical bystanders, they seldom express more than one salient characteristic. They are likely, moreover, to prove seriously misleading, unless supplemented by several additional designations fixing genus and species with greater accuracy, so as to diminish the danger of caricature or exaggeration. This is especially true of the so-called Broad Church and of Independency, names which summon up a host of one-sided misconceptions, and suggest several injurious misapplications, unless we first succeed in more precisely determining the theory and practice of the systems thus briefly denoted in ordinary discourse. Neither of these names expresses on the surface the most important characteristic of the parties whose specialities they are roughly taken to represent. On the surface, Broad Church and Independency, taken simply, suggest theories of ecclesiastical constitution. And rightly; but they connote in both cases far deeper interests and principles of thought-two historical developments of spiritual, intellectual, and political life, underlying, and in fact determining, all the superficial tendencies, modes of speech, and motives of action in ecclesiastical and secular affairs, which distinguish them to the popular eye and understanding. Both Broad Church and Independency are historical developments. But one of them has a far more ancient history than the other. Independency, as we conceive it, is not simply an outgrowth of the Reformation, founded on a protest against other men's mistakes and corruptions, but it claims to be a positive endeavour towards reproducing primitive Christianity in doctrine and discipline, founded on spiritual faith in the permanent authoritative record of the apostles of Christ. All that most deeply characterizes its revived energy in modern times is seen, we think, in the history of the primitive Church, as Mr. Hatch has recently demonstrated in his Bampton Lectures, and Bishop Lightfoot in his Commentaries on St. Paul's Epistles. Its determination to build on the foundation of written apostolic authority believed to be Divine; its immovable conviction that the cause of obedient faith and of right reason is one; its rooted habit of identifying the voices of Christ and the conscience; its zeal for individuality of thought and inquiry; its resistance to sacerdotal or rationalistic interference between God and the soul; its zeal for the local and independent organization of religious societies, ungoverned by prelatical or synodical authorities; all of these things were confessedly characteristic of the earliest ante-Nicene Christianity. The Broad Church party, on the other hand, is but a recent type of Anglicanism, as Anglicanism is for the most part a recent modification of post-Nicene Catholicism. The Broad Church is an historical development, but its history is restricted to the last fifty years; it has been gradually evolved as a reaction against the previous domination of two older types of English religion, the High Church and the Anglican Evangelical; and, in its most recent form, can claim no direct spiritual descent from any ancient type of historical Christianity whatsoever. It is a growth of modern thought. It has been gradually evolved. It did not spring into being suddenly, or in a final shape, like the immortal Minerva from the head of Jupiter;—it has grown in the struggle for existence both in strength and in extension; but its progress has been from a more defined form to a less, from a beginning of planetary brightness and comparative clearness of disc, into a cometary nebulousness, a sort of diffused radiance without much nucleus, and now spreading itself over half the sky amidst much gratulation from those who hail it as the true daylight. The name of the Broad Church has in our time carried with the populace a certain presumption in its favour. It has been taken by those who kindle at the very name of liberty, by whomsoever proclaimed, almost as a self-evident argument in recommendation of those who bear it; as a continual protest against all that is narrow in sympathy, shallow in criticism, unscientific and superstitious in belief, sectarian in bias, and puritanical in moral tone. A name, nevertheless, singularly and strangely out of harmony with Christ's description of His own religion in the words of the Sermon on the Mount, "Enter ye in by the narrow gate: for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be that go in thereat. For narrow is the gate and straitened the way that leadeth unto life, and few they be that find it:"* words which plainly indicate that the path of eternal life lies between fixed boundaries, between two extremes of thought and practice; and that Christianity, as Christ taught it, requiring in its defence the "armour of righteousness both on the right hand and the left," differed *St. Matthew vi. 13. |