HC Deb 08 February 1899 vol 66 cc246-60

"And we humbly express our regret to Your Majesty that having regard to the condition of lawlessness now prevailing in many parts of the Protestant Church of England, Your Majesty's Speech contains no reference to a subject which is causing great anxiety to many of Your Majesty's subjects."—(Mr. S. Smith.)

* MR. S. SMITH (Flintshire)

I am well aware of the disadvantages of bringing a question of this kind before Parliament, and feel the full force of the remarks made by the Leader of the House a few days ago at Manchester, when he said: — Parliament, no doubt, has to be called in to deal with questions of religion, but everybody who knows the House of Commons will agree that the less it is called in the better. It is a mixed body, containing men of all denominations, some men of no denomination and, though I do not deny that it attempts to do its duty in connection even with religious discussions, still if you can avoid religious discussions in Parliament you are well advised. At the same time this country possesses an Established Church; it holds its great position and emoluments under a compact made with Parliament; its Articles and formularies cannot be alterd except by Act of Parliament; and when a crisis arrives the Protestant Laity of the Church of England have no re dress except by coming to Parliament. They have practically no self-governing power, and when they see a condition of lawlessness prevailing they have no remedy except through Parliament, and, therefore, it is necessary, in the state of chaos that now prevails in the National Church, at least to elicit the opinion of Parliament. No one can deny that a state of chaos exists; the charges of the Bishops are sufficient to show this. The agitation in the public mind has been growing stronger and stronger for the last twelve months; and now it is certain that no question so deeply agitates the nation. Two opposite tendencies in the National Church which have existed since the time of the Reformation have now come into deadly collision. The Sacerdotal or Priestly conception of religion has gained such authority among the Clergy as to threaten the very existence of the Protestant or Evangelical conception which is that of most of the Laity; and so it comes to pass that a state of things, has grown up not unlike what existed in the time of Laud. A schism of the most violent kind has arisen between an immense body of the Clergy, aided by a limited number of earnest and sometimes wealthy Laymen, and what I may call the great body of the nation who are, and I believe will always remain, Protestant in their convictions. This is a condition of great peril, not only to the peace of the Church, but to the peace of the country. I gladly allow that the Sarcedotal Clergy and their supporters are for the most part men of earnest, self-denying life, and in some cases, if the House will allow the expression, of devout character, and their efforts have raised the standard of religion in some of the worst districts of our great cities; but this does not alter the fact that the doctrines they are teaching and the rites they are practising are opposed to the deepest convictions of the bulk of the English people, and are quite opposed both to the letter and spirit of the Prayer Book. I have not seen the case put more clearly than in this extract from the High Church Spectator: The party among clergymen which believes men in orders to be priests in the Brahminical or Roman sense has gradually won the day, until at present probably three-fourths of the whole body, of all shades of opinion except the very broad, hold that they belong to a caste set apart by the Divine Will, and possessed either of miraculous powers or of an authority which is not professional merely, but in some sense supernatural. The English Laity, on the other hand, as a body, do not admit this pretension at all. They think little upon the subject, which does not sincerely interest them, but in a passive and immovable way they reject sacerdotalism altogether. I do not agree with the last paragraph, which states that the Laity think little on this subject, which does not sincerely interest them. This may have been true at one time when the question was thought to be one of vestments and genuflexions and ornaments, but now it has come to be clearly seen that this priestly claim involves entire control of a man's life through the Confessional, and the same deep resentment is rising up against this intolerable usurpation which animated the Long Parliament and led to the evolution of Cromwell; and I venture to say that if no way can be found of curbing these priestly pretensions a tempest of indignation will arise which will sweep away the Established Church and shake social peace to its foundations. When some of us brought this question before the House last Session we were told by the Leader of the House that it was an affair of an insignificant minority; and the Bishops took the same line; but no responsible statesman will use that language now. The priestly or Romanising clergy have increased so enormously that now they predominate in most of England, and in some parts have almost exclusive possession. The dissatisfied Laity have but three courses open to them; either to conform to what they detest, and sec their children and sometimes their wives brought to the Confessional, and a system of religion set up hardly different from what you find in Spain or Italy, or else to become Nonconformist; or else to become practically Agnostics. The same result is gradually working out in England which has been evolved in many other countries where priest rule has long prevailed. The mass of the manhood is estranged from religion, and the churches become the homes of women and children. This state of things is far more widespread in the South than in the North of England. The Northern population is more robust in its mental equipment, it resents priestly dictation, and such is the repugnance to this childish and mediæval form of religion that we have been at times near to an explosion of popular resentment which would have produced dangerous disturbances. This condition of things is not removed; and there will be danger to the public peace if legal means cannot be found to restrain the Romanising clergy. The feeling of the nation is that, while Roman Catholics are fully entitled to pursue their own form of worship, it is intolerable that a Protestant and Reformed Church which discarded the doctrines of Rome three centuries ago should use its national position to thrust them again upon the people of this country. This feeling is common alike to Protestant Churchmen and Protestant Nonconformists; all are equally interested in this question. The distinction between Protestants is but small, whether they are outside or inside the National Church. Though they may differ, and differ seriously as to the remedy, they are all agreed that the evil is intolerable, and that the present state of things cannot continue. We claim as citizens of this country that the great national settlement of the sixteenth century under which this nation has wonderfully prospered shall not be set aside by the lawless action of the clergy; and the feeling is rapidly growing that if the State has no solution to offer, the State tie must be dissolved, and the contending parties left to fight out their differences in the arena of free discussion. The Amendment I have to move does not raise the question of Disestablishment. It raises what I may call the Protestant question. It raises the question of the due observance of the compact between Church and State, and the duty of the Government to safeguard the principles of the Reformation. I trust it will draw large support from both sides of the House. We have a large common area of thought and feeling on this question. This House represents the opinion of the country. I am sure that, excluding the Roman Catholics, there are not five per cent, of the adult manhood of Great Britain which sincerely believe that the clergy of the Anglican Church possess supernatural and miraculous powers; they believe on the contrary that these claims are corrupt additions in the faith taught by the Founder of Christianity, and that they have proved the bane of every nation which has adopted them. They hold with Bishop Welldon in the opinions he expressed to the Bradford Church Congress:— No decadent or dying nation in the world was Protestant. The future of the world belonged to the non-Roman Catholic nations and pre-eminently to Great Britain. The British Empire embraced some 400 millions; one-sixth, or perhaps one-fifth, of the whole habitable globe. It was not a dead or dying Empire. The unique greatness of the British Empire dated from the Reformation. They have no intention that this country shall relapse into the condition it was in before the Reformation, and they are determined that the Mass, the Confessional, and the adoration of Saints and Images which were cleared out of the National Church in the Sixteenth Century shall not be re-introduced in the Nineteenth or Twentieth Century. Some may treat this great question as a chimera. This is not the opinion of the few Protestant Bishops we still have on the Bench. The Venerable Bishop Ryle in his last charge said: — The laity throughout the land complain justly about the ceremonial novelties which extreme Ritualists have thrust into our Church worship during the last forty years. They have all been in one direction whether of dress, or gesture, or posture, or action, or anything else. They have shown one common systematic determination to unprotestantise, as far as possible, the simple worship of the Church of England, and to assimilate it as far as possible to the gaudy and sensuous worship of popery. A short catalogue," the Bishop proceeded to say, "will show what I mean."

  1. (a) Our Reformers found the sacrifice of the Mass in our Church. They cast it out as a 'blasphemous fable and dangerous deceit,' and called the Lord's Supper a Sacrament. The extreme Ritualists have re-introduced the word 'Sacrifice' and too often glory in calling the Lord's Supper a Mass.
  2. (b) Our Reformers found altars in all our Churches. They ordered them to be taken down, cast the word 'Altar' entirely out of our Prayer-book, and only spoke of the Lord's table and the Lord's board. Even one hundred years after the Protestant Reformation, when our Liturgy was finally revised and placed on its present basis in the reign of Charles II., the revisers did not attempt to bring back into our Communion service the word 'altar.' The extreme Ritualists delight in calling the Lord's table the altar, and setting up altars in all their churches.
  3. (c) Our reformers found our clergy sacrificial priests, and made them prayer-reading, preaching ministers, ministers of God's Word and sacraments. The extreme Ritualists glory in calling every clergyman a sacrificing priest."
Most of us have read that epoch, marking book by Mr. Walsh, "The Secret History of the Oxford Movement," and most of us are aware of that subtle secret conspiracy, so deep, so widespread, so determined, which has been going on now for sixty years, to un-Pro-testantise the Church of England. Most of us are now aware that the Church of England is honeycombed with societies, some secret or semi-secret, whose main object is to introduce Roman practices and Roman doctrine into the Protestant Church of England. No one can deny that. These societies contain from 7,000 to 8,000 clergy of the Church of England. After examining their rules and regulations, I was forced to the conclusion that their propaganda is designed for the restoration of nearly every doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church into the Church of England. Here is what Lord Halifax said the other day — he is the head of a public society — the English Church Union, with 4,000 clergy as members—I do not call it a secret society— We are convinced that there is nothing whatever in the authoritative documents of the English Church which, apart from the glosses of a practical Protestantism, contains anything essentially irreconcilable with the doctrines of the Church of Rome. We all know that Lord Halifax has been working for union with the Church of Rome, [A VOICE: No.] Some one says "No," but it is proved by his Lordship's own public utterances. Here is what he said at Bradford— We claim from the Episcopate the recognition of our rights. We are not content to be Catholics only in name; we claim to enjoy the Catholic religion in practice; we do not ask for toleration, but for our rights; we beseech our Bishops to remember what, as Catholic Bishops, it behaves them to do in regard to the needs of the Church which they have been called to rule; we ask them to consider that the questions with which the Church of England has to deal cannot be adequately dealt with merely by a reference to the settlement of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; above all, we pray them not to forget that if they would exact respect for their own authority, it can only be in proportion as they themselves recognise and submit to the authority of that whole Catholic Church of Christ (obviously including the Church of Rome) of which the Church of England is but a part, to which it appeals, and to which the Episcopate, no less than the clergy and laity, are bound to submit. I believe, with everyone who has followed his career, that Lord Halifax is a man most earnest, most pious; that he is engaged in advocating views which he deeply holds, and has the right to hold, but not in the Reformed Church of England. The views he holds are the views of the Church of Rome, and that is his proper place. The object of his Lordship and of the large number of clergymen who follow him, is ultimately to bring about a union of the Church of England with the Church of Rome. One of these secret societies, called the "Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament," has over 1,700 clergymen in its membership. Another, the "Society of the Holy Cross," is even more advanced, and has adopted practically the whole Roman system, except the supremacy and infallibility of the Pope. Then there is the "Guild of All Souls" with 600 clergymen in it, and the special object of that society is to introduce Requiem Masses for the souls of the departed. Everyone knows that the thirty-first Article of the Church of England describes Requiem Masses for the dead as "blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits" These clergymen had promised by their ordination vows to observe and hold that very Article, and yet they have founded this society for the purpose of publicly spreading these "blasphemous fables" all over England. But the practices of these secret societies have gone on unchecked, without almost the slightest notice from most of the Bishops. It is only lately that the feeblest attempt has been made to interfere with these men. In fact, when complaints were brought before the bishops, accompanied by full information as to the lawless practices, the complainants were snubbed and treated with contempt by the Bishops? It is undoubtedly the case that, in London especially, and in the South of England, where the most glaring practices against the law prevail, these complaints were treated with contempt. I have seen a list of appointments to preferments in the Church of England during the past twenty or thirty years, and a large number were given by the Bishops to members of these secret societies. Dr. Temple, when Bishop of London, promoted the president of the "Guild of All Souls," whose avowed object is to introduce Requiem Masses for the dead. Need we wonder at lawlessness existing in the Church, when the higher clergy act in this way? I say that the only disqualification for promotion, in the South of England at least, has been to be known as a Protestant. A "Protestant" had hardly any chance of promotion at all. Preferment was only given to one section in the Church, and this was the section lying nearest to Rome. And up to twelve months ago there was not the faintest indication of any objection by most of the bishops to the lawless practices. There are some exceptions, however, especially in the Northern province. I ask what has been the effect of the "charges" which the bishops have recently made? No doubt the bishops are beginning to condemn these practices now, in a faint sort of way. But what has been the effect upon the Clergy? I have had communications sent to mo about these practices from various parts of the country and I can scarcely discover the slightest change. If there is, it is hardly perceptible. Here I would commend to the First Lord of the Treasury a service performed a short time ago. I take the report of it from the Church Times of 4th November, and I ask whether a service of this kind is not absolutely contrary to the law of the Church?— Calmly ignoring the storm of obloquy and reproach which has burst over the Catholic Revival in the Church of England this year, the 'Guild of All Souls' has pursued the equal tenour of its way, and made its customary arrangements for the due observance of this All Souls' Day. As in past years, the guild went to St. Alban's, Holborn, for the solemn, offering of the Holy Sacrifice in commemoration of the faithful departed on the day in question. No departure was made from the ritual used on previous anniversaries. At the conclusion of the Mass came what is known as the 'Office of the Absolution of the Dead,' when the sacred ministers approached the pall-covered bier, placed in the chancel between six large lighted candles, and solemnly incensed and asperged it. I do not know that the Bishop of London has stopped this ultra Romish service. I am not aware that he has ever suppressed similar services or attempted to suppress them. Here is another service which occurred within the last month—in January. I recommend it to the notice of the Attorney-General, and ask him whether it is according to the laws of the Church of England. It is called the "Benediction of the Holy Fire" on the Festival of Holy Saturday in St. Mary's, Charing Cross Road. When I got into the church it was totally dark. There was not a glimmer of light. I knew there was somebody in the church, because I could hear the rustling of dresses, and so I felt my way to a seat. After a time I looked down by the side of the chapel and saw what looked like the light of a tallow candle, and it came nearer and nearer close to my side. As he came into dim light I could see a little boy carrying a bucket of Holy Water, two men swinging incense, and then this tallow candle, and priests in full vestments and birettas. They began the ceremony by looking into the font. A priest blew down into the water, to drive the Devil out, then set to work to blow the Devil out of the fire of a tallow candle; then he blessed the holy candle, and the holy fire of it, and from that holy fire they lit all the lights of the Church. How comes it that the Bishop cannot stop this tom-foolery? What is the Church of England coming to? What will the British nation come to if this childish superstition is allowed in the National Church? The degradation of the national intellect must ensue. Well, these acts of lawlessness are not confined to the lower clergy. Among the Bishops themselves we find very similar practices prevailing. We read in the papers that the Bishop of London had attended High Mass in one of the churches in London. I shall ask permission to quote from a letter sent to his Lordship— New University Club, St James's Street, S.W. January 10, 1899. My dear Lord,—I thank you for your courteous and kind letter received on Saturday, but I am pained and grieved beyond measure to see you were at High Mass at St. Mary Magdalene's on Saturday morning. The term 'High Mass' was used in St. Mary Magdalene's Magazine,' but on the hymn papers 'Holy Eucharist' was the phrase made use of. I see you were present throughout the service. Eucharistic vestments, altar lights, bell at consecration, the elevation of the Host and the ceremonial use of incense, though I see you were not censed. I thought the Bishops had agreed when last at Lambeth not to allow incense, bell at consecration, and elevation of the Host. You will really force my hand to take some step, which I am very loth to do.

AN HONOURABLE MEMBER

Who is the writer of the letter?

* MR. SAMUEL SMITH

the writer of the letter is Mr. T. Cheney Garfit, J.P., D.L., of Kenwick Hall, Louth—I suppose in the diocese of' Lincoln. I wish to ask this House, and the Government, if the Bishops break the law in this shameless manner is there no power to call them to account? What proceedings can be taken against bishops who deliberately break the law? I wish to ask the Attorney-General to state what legal process can be taken and enforced against the higher clergy in such cases I read not long ago that the Bishop of London had "professed" Father Adderly as a monk, and now that Father is described as the Father Superior of an order of Friars. I wish to know where in the Prayer Book or in the Formularies of the Church of England is there any provision for the institution of orders of friars and monks. I always thought that at the Reformation monasteries and convents had been abolished in England on account of their dreadful abuses. But monastic institutions nominally Anglican, but practically Roman, are rising up all over the country filled with monks and nuns. Out of some of these convents I am informed, young women are never allowed to go. And this is being done under the aegis of the Church of England. I have read accounts of what is going on in some of these convents, and I must say that for harshness I have seldom read anything to surpass it. If the House asks me to give reasons for that opinion I will give an instance. I read not long ago in the autobiography of Sister Agnes, of the life which women in Father Ignatius' convent are compelled to lead. A life more wearisome, and wretched and slavish, I have never read. On one occasion Sister Agnes was flogged with a cat-o'-nine-tails. She was stripped naked, and the back was scored until it was black and blue. I say such things are still going on, and it is intolerable that in this free country these institutions are exempt from Govern- ment inspection. We have tried to search, out grievances in every country in the world except those to be found in our own. I am told that in some convents there are secret burying places. And I do allege that from the reports that have come before me that in some convents at least cruel hardships are endured by helpless women. It is time the country should know of these things and speak out. The House of Commons which discusses all the wrongs of the world, from China to Armenia, should have an eye on what is going on at home. I find that some of the Bishops are visitors to the most advanced of those Sisterhoods, and profess to look after them. I have never heard of their interfering with the most extreme Roman practices. The fact is that the Church has drifted into a position of complete anarchy, and the chief cause of it is what Sir William Harcourt has called the "supineness of the Bishops." They have, in my opinion, deliberately encouraged these practices. The Bishops have been largely appointed from the Catholic party of the Church of England—the party which is seeking to Romanise the Church and obliterate its Protestant character. The various Governments that have ruled in this country have cast their weight chiefly into that one scale, with the result that a gradual revolution has taken place in the doctrine and discipline of the Church, and we are now confronted with a Church almost Romanised, with a vast number of the laity utterly opposed to what is practised and taught in that Church. The root of this evil is very difficult to pull up. It is part of a deeply planned conspiracy to obliterate the work of the Reformation and to pour contempt upon Protestantism, and a chief cause lies in the training of the candidates for the Ministry in the Theological Colleges. They have been nearly all under the control of the Ritualistic party for many years past. I have been examining the books and manuals used in these colleges, and they contain most of the doctrines taught in the Church of Rome, and they explain away the Protestant Articles of the Church of England. They teach the duty of the Confessional, the use of the Mass, and the adoration of the Virgin Mary.

THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY

Do I understand that these doctrines are taught in the manuals used in all the Theological Colleges?

* MR. S. SMITH

No, not at all, but in many. If I had time I could supply a list of these books.

THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY

And a list of the colleges?

* MR. S. SMITH

There are a large number. I have not a list by me, but I could supply one.

THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY

The manuals and the names of the colleges?

* MR. S. SMITH

Yes. These young men are especially taught the prodigious power of the priesthood; they teach raw, ill-informed young men that in receiving Orders they become endowed with supernatural powers, that they can work sacramental miracles and forgive sins, or refuse, as they think best; and they are taught that these powers belong to their office, and are possessed for life apart from moral character, so that an irreligious priest still possesses power to give absolution in the Confessional or refuse it; they almost teach the doctrine of the Church of Rome as stated by Pope Innocent III.:— God is obliged to abide by the judgment of His Priests, and either not to pardon or to pardon according as they refuse to give absolution, provided the penitent is capable of it. The Bishop of Worcester put the case clearly in one of his charges: — But a process was going on, especially among the younger clergy, to which he could not shut his eyes. Gradually, insensibly, the poison of Roman Tractarianism had filtered through the veins of the Church. The novel Tractarian doctrine of the Eucharist was accepted almost without investigation; it was taught in the theologial colleges; young candidates for holy orders were saturated with it. They accepted without questioning- the statements and arguments (if they could be called such) which were put before them in the lecture room. They read very little; they novel read with open, unprejudiced mind he asked one of them not long since what he had read, and the candid reply was 'Pusey, and extracts from Pusey.' 'Have you read nothing else?' 'No, nothing else.' There was no candour, no love of the truth for the truth's sake; only the blind adherence to a system, and the determination at all hazards to upheld that system. They had wandered far not only from the Reformation, but from the best traditions of the English Church. It is this teaching that has produced among the younger clergy such a dislike to the Protestant Articles of the Church of England, and has led to all sorts of dishonest evasion of their plan, natural sense. It has led good and earnest men into a species of equivocation and mental reservation. This whole school of thought is tainted by the docrine of "reserve" or "economy," as taught by Newman (Walsh, page 2), who approves of the following maxim: — He both thinks and speaks the truth, except when careful treatment is necessary, and then, as a physician for the good of his patients, ha will lie, or rather utter a lie, as the Sophists say… … … Nothing, however, but his neighbours' good will lead him to do this. He gives himself up for the Church. It is largely by dishonest and underhand means that this movement has spread so enormously; chiefly by influencing children and young people, often without the knowledge of their parents. These lawless clergy have used their power at Confirmation time to insist on the Confessional, and to my certain knowledge have sometimes exacted a solemn pledge that the child shall never enter a Nonconformist place of worship, sometimes requiring them to sign a paper to that effect, and treating it as equally a sin to hear Spurgeon preach as to break the Ten Commandments. We are indebted to Sir William Harcourt for bringing to light the letter of a priest (Church Review, Dec. 29, 1898) who describes the method of action: — My own practice in this respect, which is that of many other priests, is to take it for granted that all confirmation candidates will make their confession. Two or three days before confirmation, having been instructed on the Sacrament of penance, they come into Church. They are numbered off: one, two, three, etc., the priest goes to the confessional, and they go up in order, No. 3, for instance, knowing that it is Ms turn to go up when No. 2 returns to his place. Of course, they are put in different places in the church, but the effect is to make them learn that the Sacrament is an ordinary Church form in which all Catholics take part. The same takes place before all the great festivals, and they accept it like ducks accept water. Let me add that the Church of England Elementary schools are, I believe, largely used to inculcate these doctrines, and School Histories are supplied by the Clergy to malign the Reformation, and distort the plain facts of history. The country is now flooded with Catechisms and Manuals for the young, several of which I have read, which are virtually copies of Roman Catholic treatises, teaching the very doctrines which the 39 Articles were drawn up to deny. These clergy subscribe the Articles denying the Mass, Trans instantiation, Purgatory, the Worship of the Virgin Mary and the Saints; and yet their Catechisms are full of these very doctrines. I wish to ask on what principle of honesty or common morality can this be defended. Is not Sir William Harcourt right in denouncing this conduct as treachery? Up till a few months ago no notice was taken by the Bishops of these dishonest Catechisms; indeed, several of them were patrons of the institutions which used them. For instance, the Bishop of Ely is visitor of the Society of the Sacred Mission, which is really a monastic order, and now he has recognised it as a theological and missionary college. This mission affords grants at a reduced rate for "A Catechism of Faith and Practice," for use in Sunday schools.

House adjourned at 5.30 o'clock.