Short Reasons for Communion with the Church of England / Or, The Churchman's answer to the question, "Why are you a Member of the Established Church?"
Date: 2017-03-07T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Church of England -- Apologetic works

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Short Reasons for Communion with the Church of England

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Title: Short Reasons for Communion with the Church of England

Author: Thomas Tregenna Biddulph

Release date: March 7, 2017 [eBook #54295]

Language: English

Credits: Transcribed from the 1826 J. Chilcott edition by David Price

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHORT REASONS FOR COMMUNION WITH THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND ***

Transcribed from the 1826 J. Chilcott edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org

No. XXXI.

Church of England Tract Society,
Instituted in Bristol, 1811.

SHORT REASONS
FOR COMMUNION
With the Church of England;

OR,
THE CHURCHMAN’S ANSWER TO THE QUESTION,

“WHY ARE YOU A MEMBER OF THE
ESTABLISHED CHURCH?”

“Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”—Ephes. iv. 3.

“Beseeching Thee to inspire continually the universal Church with the spirit of truth, unity, and concord; and grant that all they that do confess Thy holy name, may agree in the truth of Thy holy word, and live in unity and godly love.”

Com. Service.

Sold at the Depository, 6, Clare Street, Bristol;
And by Seeley and Son, 169, Fleet Street, London.
Price 1¼d. each, or 6s. 8d. per Hundred.
An Allowance to Subscribers and Booksellers.

J. Chilcott, Printer, 30, Wine Street, Bristol.
1826.

“O ALMIGHTY God, who hast built Thy Church upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the head corner-stone; grant us so to be joined together in unity of spirit by their doctrine, that we may be made a holy temple acceptable unto Thee, through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.”

COLLECT
For St. Simon and St. Jude’s Day.

SHORT REASONS FOR COMMUNION WITH THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND, &c.

REASON I.

I maintain communion with the Church of England, not MERELY because my parents and forefathers were members of her community.

The connexion which my parents and forefathers held with the Church of England I consider to be a sufficient reason why I should continue in communion with her, if there be nothing contrary to the law of God in such a connexion.  For the fifth commandment peremptorily requires me to “honour my father and mother;” and, assuredly, this duty implies reverence to their example, if that example be not inconsistent with the rule of God’s holy word.

But as a man’s parents and forefathers may have been members of a communion, a continuance in which would be manifestly contrary to the word of God (as, for instance, if a man were born of Popish or Socinian parents;) I therefore say, that “I maintain communion with the Church of England, not MERELY because my parents and forefathers were members of her community.”

REASON II.

I maintain communion with the Church of England, not MERELY because she is ancient and venerable.

Her antiquity is a sufficient reason to justify my continuance in her communion, if it can be shown that nothing materially differing from the primitive and apostolic Church, in doctrine or discipline, has, in the long course of her existence, been introduced into her constitution.  For the more ancient any Church can prove to be, the nearer is the approach to the source of Divine authority and sanction.  Now the Church of England existed long before her corruption by popery; and the labours and sufferings of her Martyrs in the sixteenth century were employed, not in planting a new Church, but in correcting gross abuses in one which had been long established.  They are therefore called Reformers.  The Church of England, as is highly probable, was planted by St. Paul; and we know from credible history, that there was a church in Britain during the apostolic age, and that there were bishops who presided in it soon after that period.

But as that which is ancient may have been corrupted, antiquity alone would not fully justify my continuance in any visible Church, though it strongly enforces the necessity of earnestness and diligence in inquiring about the reality and nature of the supposed corruption, before I venture to quit the Church of which I have been made by baptism a member.

REASON III.

I maintain communion with the Church of England, not MERELY because she is established by law.

This, like the two former reasons, is a sufficient one to enforce my continuance in communion with the Church of England, unless she be found, after due inquiry, to be contrary, in her constitution or doctrines, to the word of God.  For I am required to “submit myself to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake.”  Nothing can justify my departure from a church so established, but the well-known decision in cases where the law of God and the law of man are in opposition to each other.  In any such case the duty is clear to “obey God rather than man.”

Such an opposition may exist between human laws and the law of God; and therefore “I maintain communion with the Church of England, not MERELY because she is established by law.”

REASON IV.

But I maintain communion with the Church of England, because her government is episcopal, i.e. by Bishops; this being the mode of Church government which existed in the primitive Church, and was founded by the Apostles of our Lord.

In stating reasons for conformity which are to be comprised within a few pages, it is impossible to enter at large into the proof of the fact here asserted, viz. that the primitive church as founded by the Apostles of our Lord, was episcopal; or, in other words, that the power of ordination and government in the church was vested by the Apostles in officers superior to the order of Presbyters, and who are now called by the name of Bishops.  I must therefore only state a few circumstances, which are capable of being clearly proved, without producing the evidence on which my belief of them is built.

1.  Episcopal government, as established in the Church of England, has all the authority in its favour which prescription or long usage can give it.  The most learned of its adversaries have never been able to fix on any period in the Christian Church, from the time of the Apostles to the Reformation, in which the ordination of men to the ministry of the gospel was considered to be vested in any other minister or ministers than a Bishop.

2.  All the instances of ordination, recorded in the New Testament, are in favour of Episcopacy.  For there is no single instance of ordination, on record there, performed by presbyters, or at least without the presence and co-operation of some officer superior to presbyters.

3.  All the directions concerning ordination, given in the New Testament, are addressed to persons superior to presbyters.  Such, confessedly, were Timothy and Titus; and to them only are any such directions given.

4.  The Apostles, at their decease, left the government of the several churches which they had planted, and the ordination of their ministers, in the hands of fixed Bishops.

It may be granted that, during the life-time of the Apostles, the title Bishops, was common to all presbyters, and that this name was not confined to an officer superior to presbyters till after their decease.  For it is not the name but the office about which I am inquiring.—It moreover appears that, during the life of the Apostles, some churches had each its settled Bishop, as the seven churches of Asia, who are addressed in their several epistles through the medium of an individual; (Rev. ii. 3.) and that of Crete, where Titus was left by St. Paul. (Titus i. 2.)  Other churches however had none as yet settled among them, being under the immediate government of the Apostles, who frequently visited or sent to them, and either themselves, or by other superior officers, ordained ministers for them.

But immediately after the death of the Apostles there was, in every church, an officer superior to presbyters, who was called by way of distinction a Bishop.  This we learn from express testimonies in the remaining writings of men who lived in the time of the Apostles; such as Clemens Romanus, mentioned in Phil. iv. 3.—Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, who suffered martyrdom in the year 107; and Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, who was burned in the year 167, aged one hundred years or more.  These excellent apostolic men have expressly spoken in their epistles of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, as the stated officers of the Christian Churches, assigning to the former the prerogatives or rights of government and ordination in their several districts.  Besides this, ancient historians of the church have given lists of successive Bishops, that is, of individual presidents, in several of the more important churches, reaching up to the very time of the Apostles.

Now it is not to be supposed that, immediately after the death of the Apostles, any innovation or change, so important and invidious as that of episcopal government, would or could have been introduced; or that, supposing it to be destitute of apostolic sanction, its introduction should produce no opposition.  Much less is it to be supposed that such men as Clemens, Ignatius, and Polycarp, the disciples and friends of the Apostles, would have suffered such an innovation to be introduced, and have mentioned it in the highest terms of approbation.  But the truth is, that they speak of the three orders of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, in the Christian Church as conformed to the three ranks of ministers in the Jewish Church, the High Priests, the common Priests, and the Levites, [8]—as ordained by Christ himself, and as existing even during His own ministry, He himself acting as the great Bishop, His Apostles as His Presbyters, and the seventy disciples as His Deacons: and as at length established in the universal Church by apostolic authority and usage.

On this ground then I justify my continuance in the Church of England, viz. its conformity in this important branch of its constitution to the primitive and apostolic church.  But I wish it to be understood that I assign my reasons for such a continuance, not with a view to the conversion of those to my sentiments who are not members of our church; but merely for the purpose of showing that I do not act without reason, and of confirming those who are members of our own church, but have not had an opportunity of obtaining information on the subject under consideration,—of confirming them in their attachment to that church, which I consider to be “built,” in its constitution as well as its doctrines, “on the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner-stone.”  From Him all authority descends; for in Him, as “the head of His body the church,” it is all vested by Divine appointment.  “All power is given unto me in heaven and upon earth.—Go ye therefore and teach (or make disciples of) all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”  Thus He handed down the authority He had received to His Apostles; they transmitted it to their immediate successors; and so it has descended to the Bishops or chief pastors of the church in our own day.  Without wishing to interfere with the right of private judgment which belongs to every man, and for the exercise of which he is accountable to God only; I own that I cannot see how the Christian Church as a visible society, could have been continued in the world without such a communication of Divine authority.

REASON V.

I maintain communion with the Church of England, because her doctrines are fixed by articles of Religion, which appear to me to be derived from and perfectly conformable to the Scriptures of Truth.

I AM fully aware that some among the ministers of the church to which I belong, may have entered into her service without understanding or fully approving the articles to which they subscribed their assent and consent, and consequently may preach doctrines differing from those of the church whose ministers they are.  The possibility of the supposed case appears from the painful necessity, under which a late Bishop of London was laid, of depriving an unsound clergyman of his office.  But such ministers cannot do this without exposing their own ignorance or hypocrisy; nor can their own unbelief make the faith of the church of no effect.  These articles I consider to be the bulwark of orthodoxy or true doctrine in our church,—the means of her preservation from apostacy in the lowest state of spiritual life to which she has been or may be reduced, and of providing for her recovery from such a state whenever God is pleased to breathe upon her.  A declaration or subscription to the truth of the Bible would afford no security, as all who bear the Christian name, however heretical or unsound in opinion, pretend to derive their creed from the word of God.  I conceive therefore that it is of high importance to have the principal articles of the Christian faith embodied in such a way, that no heretic can, without manifest dishonesty, subscribe to them.  If the incumbent or minister of any parish be thus dishonest, having subscribed to what he never cordially believed, and preaching doctrines contrary to the articles he has subscribed, when his incumbency or ministry in that parish ceases by death or any other cause, the articles of the church remain in full force.  But if no such test existed, and if the election to church preferment were vested in the people, a single incumbency might so corrupt the opinions of the congregation as to perpetuate heresy from generation to generation.

I continue therefore in the communion of the Church of England, because she has fixed principles, and those principles are, in my judgment, scriptural and “according to godliness.”

REASON VI.

I maintain communion with the Church of England, because her mode of worship is primitive and scriptural, and in my judgment best calculated to promote general and individual edification.

“Mr. Wheatly has proved (referring us to the testimonies of Josephus, Philo, Paul Fagius, &c.) that the ancient Jews did always worship God in public by precomposed forms.  Dr. Lightfoot not only affirms the same thing, but sets down both the order and method of their hymns and supplications.  Now it appears from the general tenour of the four Gospels, and particularly from Luke iv. 16. that our Saviour habitually attended at the service of the Temple, or of the Synagogue, on every Sabbath-day. [12a]  He therefore, by this act, from week to week, gave a public sanction to all the Jewish forms of Divine worship.  And had it been otherwise, the Scribes and Pharisees, His implacable foes and persecutors, would not have failed to load Him with their severest reproaches, as an open enemy to all godliness.  He lived and died a member of the Jewish Church.  He moreover gave a set form of prayer to His Apostles, which has ever since been used in the Christian Church.  And it is evident from many passages in the book of their acts, that they also, in conformity to His Divine example, did attend on the service both of the Temple and Synagogue; and it is expressly said, (Acts xvii. 2.) that it was ‘the manner’ of Paul so to do.  The apostolic practice is therefore another sanction to the same religious institution.

“Mr. Wheatly has also shown, by sundry appeals to ancient Christian writers, that the three first centuries joined in the use of precomposed set forms of prayer, besides the Lord’s prayer and Psalms; and that these were styled by so early a writer as Justin Martyr, who died in the year of our Lord 163, ‘Common Prayers;’ by Origen, ‘Constituted Prayers;’ and by Cyprian, ‘Solemn Prayers.’—From hence the inference is fairly drawn, that a liturgy composed for public use, is warranted by the practice of our Saviour, of His Apostles, and of the primitive Christians.” [12b]

REASON VII.

I maintain communion with the Church of England, because her Liturgy is scriptural in its doctrine, plain in its style, comprehensive in its addresses to the throne of mercy, and therefore adapted to general use.

In confirmation of this reason, I shall content myself with the declaration of one, whose testimony may have the more weight in consequence of his being unconnected with the Church whose liturgy he has extolled, the eloquent and candid Robert Hall.  At the Leicester Bible Society he spoke thus of our Liturgy.  “I believe that the evangelical purity of its sentiments, the chastised fervour of its devotion, and the majestic simplicity of its language, have placed it in the very first rank of uninspired compositions.”

REASON VIII.

I maintain communion with the Church of England, because a separation from her, without a sufficient reason, would, in my opinion, be a great sin.

“There is, undeniably, such a sin as schism, against which we are precautioned in the New Testament, as being one proof of carnality in a religious professor, (1 Cor. iii. 3.) and as being diametrically opposite to the duty of ‘endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace’.”

“By schism we are to understand a causeless secession from our Church, into the communion of which we have been solemnly admitted by baptism.  And that such a secession would be causeless on our part, is evident from this simple consideration, that our Church neither proposes to our faith any doctrine which is not evidently contained in the Scripture; nor obtrudes on us any practice which the Scriptures forbids, nor restrains us from the observation of any rule which the Scripture enjoins.” [14]

It is not, in my humble opinion, a sufficient reason for a separation from the general Church to which I belong, that the gospel is not preached from the pulpit of the particular place in which I live.  To admit for argument sake, the worst case that can occur, viz. that a Socinian clergyman had, through his own hypocrisy in subscription, got possession of the pulpit of my parish; my removal from that parish to another, if I could find no other way of remedying the calamity, would be a less evil than the act of separation, and the encouragement of a spirit of division in the Church of Christ.  The word of God prohibits my making such a division; but it no where forbids me to make any sacrifice of temporal emolument or accommodation for the benefit of my own soul, or the souls of my family.

REASON IX.

I maintain communion with the Church of England, because I have discovered no sufficient reason for a separation from her.

I WISH it to be distinctly understood that I judge no man, however his views of this subject may differ from my own.  Every man must act according to the guidance of his own conscience, after having seriously and diligently used all the means within his reach, by reading and prayer, to obtain information and direction.  It is not to those who conscientiously dissent from our communion that I address my reasons; but to those of my own Church.  And if any of these should be confirmed in their attachment to her by reading my short statement of the grounds on which my own conduct is built, I shall have attained the only end I have had in view, and rejoice in my success.

CONCLUSION.

Let not my brother churchman, however, satisfy himself with being a member of the visible Church; but let him examine himself whether he be a living branch in the true vine, united to Christ by faith, and bringing forth the fruits of righteousness by virtue of union with Him.  Let him inquire whether he have ever experienced conversion to God,—whether his heart have been humbled, spiritualized, and comforted by those doctrines which he professes to believe as derived from Scripture, and by that worship in which he professes to join as being primitive and “according to godliness.”  Let him remember the solemn words of Him, who is the Founder, Head, and Judge of the Christian Church.  At the close of His awful parable of the ten virgins, He represents the foolish virgins, who had lamps without oil, as coming to the door of the guest-chamber, and saying “Lord, Lord, open to us.”  But the Bridegroom answers, “Verily, I say unto you, I know you not.”  Let him also remember the sentence passed on the guest at the marriage feast in the gospel who had not on the wedding garment. (Matt. xxii. 1, &c.)

“I am therefore to consider that all are not Israel that are of Israel; all were not Jews that were circumcised; all are not Christians that have been brought by baptism into the Church; for many are called but few are chosen.  Under the present state of things, bad and good are together at the marriage feast of the gospel; and many of those that are now called to be among the rest will not be chosen at the last as fit for the kingdom of God.  I am therefore not to depend upon any privileges I have at present, unless I use them right; and must give all diligence to make my calling and election sure.” [16]

FINIS.

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND TRACT SOCIETY HAS PUBLISHED

Two Dialogues between Thomas Steady and William Candid about going to Church.—Extracts from the Epistle of St. Clements to the Corinthians.—Arguments in favour of Infant Baptism; with Extracts from Bishop Bradford’s Sermon on Baptismal and Spiritual Regeneration.—The Churchman Instructed in the Book of Common Prayer.—The Churchman’s Directory in the Study of the Holy Scriptures; or Helps in reading and hearing the daily Lessons, the Psalms, and the Epistles and Gospels in the Church Service, &c. &c.

J. Chilcott, Printer, 30, Wine Street, Bristol.

FOOTNOTES.

[8]  The government of every synagogue seems to have borne some resemblance of the general ecclesiastical establishment in the Jewish Church.  For there were fixed ministers to take care of the religious duties to be performed therein; and these were by imposition of hands solemnly admitted to their office.  He who presided is called in the New Testament Archysynagogus, or the ruler of the Synagogue.  This word is sometimes used in a larger sense, for any one of the officers who had power in the affairs of the synagogue.  Thus, (Acts xiii. 15.) we read of the rulers of one synagogue, as we also read (Luke iii. 2.) that Annas and Caiaphas were contemporary High Priests, though we know that in a strict sense there could be but one who bore that office.  But generally and properly the word Archysynagogus describes the president, or chief of the officers of the synagogue; as Luke xiii. 14. and Acts xviii. 8, 17.

Next to the Archysynagogus were the Elders or presbyters of the Synagogue.  The person whose office it was to offer up public prayer to God for the whole congregation, was probably one of these.  He was called Sheliac Zibbor, that is, the Angel of the Church, because as their messenger, he spoke to God for them.  Hence the pastors of the seven churches of Asia, in the book of the Revelation, are called by a name borrowed from the Synagogue, “Angels of the Churches.”

Under these were inferior officers in every Synagogue, called in Hebrew Chezanim, who were also fixed ministers, and under the rulers of the Synagogue, had the charge and oversight of all things in it.  The deacon is mentioned in Luke iv. 20.

In every instance, so far as I have observed, our Lord adopted the institutions of the Jewish Church, unless they were inapplicable to His new dispensation.  “To the end we may understand apostolical tradition to have been taken from the Old Testament; that which Aaron, and his sons, and the Levites were in the Temple, Bishops, Presbyters, and Deacons in the Church may lawfully challenge to themselves.”—St. Hierom, Ep. 85.

[12a]  The liturgy of the Jewish Church, in which our Lord and His Apostles joined may be found in Prideaux’s Connection of the Old and New Testament.

[12b]  Hart’s Answer to Gill’s Reasons.

[14]  Hart’s Answer to Gill’s Reasons.

[16]  Rev. William Jones’s Works, vol. xi.

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Table of Contents

- SHORT REASONS FOR COMMUNION With the Church of England;

- SHORT REASONS FOR COMMUNION WITH THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND, &c.

- REASON I.

- REASON II.

- REASON III.

- REASON IV.

- REASON V.

- REASON VI.

- REASON VII.

- REASON VIII.

- REASON IX.

- CONCLUSION.

- THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND TRACT SOCIETY HAS PUBLISHED

- FOOTNOTES.

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE