Why the Scottish Office must be maintained. 33 "We desire to express our dissent from the idea of those who would seem to erect the principle of Liturgical conformity as the one great note of union and communion, and would remind them that the Catholic Church in Scotland is not a mere appendage to the Catholic Church in England, but, though unestablished, still a National Church; that every particular or National Church hath authority to ordain, change, and abolish ceremonies or rites of the Church, ordained only by man's authority, so that all things are done to edifying;' and that in primitive times, almost every Diocese had its own particular Liturgy prescribed by its Bishop, and yet, that a more efficient intercommunion was maintained between the several portions of the primitive Church than has been secured to the various branches of the later Church. "Although we are unwilling to contemplate the possibility of the abrogation, or even the remodelling of Canon XXI., yet, in such an event, we should feel it our sacred duty to protest against the sin, which, in abandoning the Scottish Office, the relinquishment of such an amount of Catholic truth would involve; for that it would involve such a relinquishment, the undersigned cannot escape from the conviction, seeing that the present clamour against the Scottish Office originated with individuals who demanded its abolition, not chiefly because it is expedient to assimilate ourselves to the sister Church of England, not chiefly because uniformity is desirable but principally and avowedly because, in their eyes, it is deeply tainted with Popish idolatry and superstition. "In order to guard ourselves against any chance of misconception, we deem it right to declare our conviction, that the Communion Offices of Scotland and England teach the same holy and scriptural truths; both equally remote from the Romish dogma of a corporeal presence, and the ultra-Protestant error of a mere commemoration in the holy Eucharist. We are satisfied that the distinctive doctrines of the Eucharist are contained in the one office, by plain implication, obvious inference, and statements more or less explicit, while in the other we see them clearly and broadly enunciated, and without the possibility of heretical perversion. No disciple of Zwinglius or Hoadley could subscribe to the Scottish Communion Office. It is only when these distinctive doctrines are denied, an opposite and uncatholic sense attempted to be put upon the English Office, and the abandonment of the Scottish Office demanded as a consequence, that we feel it our duty to resist the repeal of the Canon which recognises that Office, and for the reasons E 34 Abandonment of the Office equivalent to Apostacy. above stated, solemnly to declare that, in our eyes, its relinquishment would be tantamount to an apostacy." Why need we be so much moved by clamorous misrepresentation at this late period, as if any new thing had befallen us? Let us remember that our Fathers were no less violently assailed and calumniated under circumstances infinitely more trying than ours. At a time, when to come forward publicly in defence of the Church was an act attended with personal danger, and when her faithful members could only meet by stealth, and at the risk of suffering and loss, they triumphantly repelled such attacks on her Apostolic doctrines and primitive formularies :-in spite of persecution and laboured calumny, the Church firmly maintained her unwavering witness to Catholic Truth. Our fathers have, indeed, settled for us the present controversy-we have merely to abide in our place-quietly to rest on their acts. Was it only for the external form of the Church that they surrendered their all in this life, and endured bitter poverty, the scoffs of the world, bonds and imprisonment? Nay, it was also that they might hand on the sacred deposit of Catholic Truth that had been committed to them, of which the Church is the Divinely appointed keeper. If they, as confessors, endured all this for the truth's sake, shall we, who now through their sufferings and toils begin to be ashamed of their testimony, and to think scorn of those inestimable privileges which they purchased for us so dearly? If they, earnestly contending for the faith, indignantly repelled the taunts and reproaches of ignorant or designing men, maligning them as corrupters of the truth, shall we who have never made one sacrifice for it, abiding in our quiet homes, passively yielding to the clamours and misrepresentations which they have already refuted, indolently fold our hands and bid surrender all that they had gained for us on account of a delusive phantom of peace? Alas for the peace to be so purchased! He who consents to such a 1 This address was subscribed by the Dean, and almost every clergyman in the Diocese of Aberdeen. 2 The Rev. John Skinner's Letter to Sievwright above referred to, was, for this reason, published anonymously. Mr. Skinner had only a few years before its date been imprisoned during the space of six months in the common gaol of Aberdeen for the offence of administering, as a priest of the Church, her holy offices to more than four persons at one time assembled. See Skinner's Life prefixed to his Posthumous Works, pp. xi, xii, xxiii. Absurdity of falling back on English Orders. 35 truce "gives up the doctrine [of the Communion Office] to those who have displayed the bitterest hostility against it agrees to suppress the truth-extinguishes for ever the witness of the Church and condemns those venerable and holy bishops who acted and suffered to regain the privilege which he so lightly throws away. We may close our eyes as we please to the facts of the case, but we cannot make them other than they are. We must maintain the Communion Office we have inherited, or, by a solemn act before God, and in the face of Christendom, renounce for ourselves and the Church the doctrines it contains. This is the alternative, the only alternative, that circumstances have permitted to our choice. It is not a question between the Scottish Office and the English. It is a question between doctrines which have been ever held in the Catholic Church, and errors, or, at the very least, defective teaching, promulgated by modern sectaries. The objections which have been poured out on all sides have made this the true state of the question beyond the reach of denial; and we must make our election. It avails nothing to speak of the advantage of strict uniformity of the acquisitions the Church might gain from other bodies of the painfulness of dissension-the danger of secessionthe inestimable value of union and peace. For none of all these Let us but be faith may we surrender the trust committed to us. ful and unshrinking in our witness, and God will work for us as He has done in time past." 4. The pretence of English Orders. One of the leading pretexts put forward by the clergymen who have cast themselves out of the Church, is that founded on the circumstance of their having been ordained in England ;-they pretend, as they call it, to fall back on their English Orders. Although not in communion with the Bishops of Scotland, we continue, they say, to officiate in that country apart from them, in virtue of our ordination by English Bishops. Of the utter fallacy of such a pretence we need not to inform any one who is, in the slightest degree, acquainted with the first principles of the constitution of the Church. It is self-evident that such a 1 The Authority and Use of the Scottish Communion Office Vindicated, by the Rev. P. Cheyne, pp. 47, 48. 36 English Church can give no mission in Scotland. principle is utterly subversive of her very existence, and embodies the undisguised elements of schism and division. The testimony of Holy Scripture and the Church, on this subject, have been so recently set forth, that it is unnecessary at this place to do more than refer to it. It will be sufficient that we recapitulate the sum of that witness in the words of a holy martyr of the Primitive Church, "Although a contumacious and proud multitude," says St. Cyprian, "of such as will not obey, may withdraw, yet the Church does not depart from Christ, and they are the Church who are a people united to the Bishop, and a flock adhering to their own shepherd. Whence you ought to know that the Bishop is in the Church, and the Church in the Bishop: and if any be not with the Bishop, he is not in the Church; and that they in vain flatter themselves, who, not having peace with the priests of God, creep in, and think that they secretly hold communion with certain persons, [in such way, for instance, as the Anglican Schismatics in Scotland pretend that they do with the English Bishops and Church] whereas, the Church, which is Catholic, and one, is not separated nor divided, but is in truth connected and joined together by the cement of Bishops mutually cleaving to each other."2 "Whence," says an English Archbishop, "arises the necessity which every Christian lies under of maintaining communion with the particular Church wherein he lives, in order to his communion with the Church Catholic, and Christ the Head of it." Or in the words of Bishop Jeremy Taylor-" He that goes away from the Bishop, and wilfully separates, departs from God's Church; and whether he can then be with God is a very material consideration, and fit to be thought on by all that think heaven a more eligible good than the interests of a faction, and the importune desire of rule, can countervail."4 Such are the undoubted principles which have been maintained in the Church from the Apostles' times. As the Bishop represents the Church, and is the visible symbol of unity, so, in like manner, each Presbyter is the representative of his Bishop; he has no mission unless through him; and, while acting in the Church, all I The Church in Scotland: Unity and Schism. St. Cyprian's Epist. lxvi. 7. 2 3 Archbishop Potter on Church Government. 33, 34. 4 Preface to Consecration Sermon, Jan. 27, 1660. See Unity and Schism, pp. See Unity and Schism, Jurisdiction of our Bishops admitted by the Schismatics. 37 his acts must be done in virtue of such authority, express or implied. The question, therefore, arises, if the pretence of the Separatists be well founded, from what English Bishop did they get their mission to officiate in Scotland apart from, and in opposition to, the Scottish Church? None of them has yet dared to affirm that he ever received such a mission, which, we need hardly say, no English Bishop has any power to confer. But let us attend, further, to the actual circumstances. Every one of the schismatical clergymen was ordained in England or Ireland, with a view to institution in a particular charge in these countries, under a particular Bishop; and he could not have received ordination without reference to some such special cure. When these priests resigned their charges in England or Ireland, they obtained testimonials from their respective Bishops. These testimonials they brought with them, and laid, along with their Letters of Orders, before the respective Bishops in Scotland in whose dioceses they wished to be instituted to charges,-first, for the purpose of satisfying them of their being in lawful Orders, and in full communion with the Church of England; and, secondly, in order that the Bishops in Scotland, being so satisfied, might receive them into their communion, and admit them as priests of the Scottish Church. Now, there are two inferences which necessarily follow from this conduct:-That the persons applying to the Scottish Bishops for institution acknowledged them as lawful and canonical Bishops; and that they recognised them as being in full communion with the English Church. For, in the first place, if the persons now referred to did not acknowledge the Scottish Bishops as lawful Catholic Bishops, then were the solemn proceedings at their institution, and the vows then taken by them, a piece of awful mockery transacted by them in the presence of Almighty God; and, in the second place, if the Scottish Church was not in communion with that of England, then did these clergymen commit an ecclesiastical offence, for which they were liable to punishment, as much as if they had been instituted to a benefice, and taken vows of canonical obedience, within the diocese of a Bishop in communion with Rome. The persons now schismatically opposing the Church, came thus into Scotland, not in virtue of any mission to this country received by them from England, which that Church could not give, but with the direct object of being admitted by the Scottish Bishops to a |