PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET,
AND CHARING CROSS.
THE
IRISH CHURCH
AND ITS FORMULARIES.
My dear Lord Primate,
I venture to assume your forgiveness for placing on paper some thoughts upon the present policy of the Irish Church, and for throwing these thoughts into the form of a letter to yourself, in obedience alike to my respect for your office, and to my affection for your person. I need not remind your Grace that there are circumstances which make the well-being of the Irish Church a subject of more especial personal concern to myself than it can be to most members of the English branch of our one common Church. I trust, therefore, that my brother Churchmen of Ireland will take in the same good part, as that in which they are offered, some friendly considerations upon the appointment, by the late Church Convention in Ireland, of the Committee which has been instructed "to consider whether, without making any such alterations in the Liturgy or Formularies of our Church as would involve or imply a change in her doctrines, any measure can be suggested calculated to check the introduction and spread of novel doctrines and practices opposed to the principles of our Reformed Church; and to report to the General Synod in 1871."
I do not think such a review, made by an Englishman from an English standing point, can be unacceptable to my Irish friends. The members of the Irish Church have undoubtedly the right to claim for themselves that intimate knowledge of their own position and requirements which renders them in the last resort—now that their political connection with the Established Church of England has been rent—sole judges of the wisdom, not less than of the lawfulness of their own proceedings, as far as they affect the internal constitution of their community. This right I am the last man to infringe or call into question. But it is because the members of the Irish Church are the masters of their own actions, that outsiders can, without offence, take upon themselves the responsibility of a friendly criticism, which those to whom it is addressed may, if they please, ignore.
The one object which I have at heart in all that I shall say is the maintenance, unbroken and unweakened, of the strictest alliance between the Irish and the English Churches, convinced as I am that any rupture of the union which has for so long existed between them would be attended with most disastrous consequences to both communities. This union can, I believe, only be insured, as matters at present stand, by the joint acceptance, on both sides of St. George's Channel, of those identical formularies which were, at the moment of Irish disestablishment, a common inheritance. I do not say that these formularies must for all time to come remain the same, for this would be to limit the Christian liberty of Christian Churches. As little do I say that intercommunion, even under existing circumstances, could not be continued with variant formularies, for this would be to overlook, not only Church common law, but the present examples of the Episcopal Churches of Scotland and the United States, about which I shall have something to say further on. But I do assert that, as matters actually stand, and for reasons it may be of a temporary or a secondary nature, which are yet substantial and cogent, the Irish Church might now risk painful embarrassments affecting her connection with that of England, by the very fact of altering, even in a few particulars, those formularies which are the joint inheritance of both. I make bold further to assert that any such breach of harmony would be so calamitous an event as to outbalance all possible advantage arising out of the additional paper bulwarks which might be thrown up against the advances of Popery on one side, or of Freethinking on the other.
After these remarks your Grace will not be astonished at the avowal that to me the advantage or disadvantage of the Committee appointed in the terms of the Duke of Abercorn's amendment turns upon one question of overpowering importance, "Does it, or does it not, by the letter of the resolution from which it takes its appointment, open the door to any possible revision at present, and for Ireland alone—irrespective of the English Church—of the existing formularies?" If it does not, it may be desirable or not, on general grounds, but I shall have nothing to say to it; if it does—however valuable it may be in other respects—it carries within itself, in my opinion, the seeds of fatal mischief.
fulfilment