CHURCH REUNION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11711, 22 July 1901, Page 7

CHURCH REUNION.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —Bishop "Wallis* recent utterance on the question of church reunion contains much, that is admirable, but there is one characteristic of nearly all Anglican treatment of . this question from which even so large-minded a bishop has not been able to deliver himself, and - which writes failure at once upon the project of reunion , from the Anglican standpoint. I refer to the insistence by Anglicans upon the retention of their anomalous form of church government. In 'calling this form anomalous, I do not forget that hierarchical episcopacy prevails in . a large majority of the churches of Christendom, but in all of those churches except one it is the unquestioned expression in polity of the spiritual principles which the churches agree in maintaining; it is the fabric which enshrines a sacerdotal creed. The one exception is the Church of England which; after abandoning . the mediaeval sacerdotal creed for the apostolic evangelical creed revival at the Reformation, has retained the mediaeval hierarchical polity. She thus stands alone among ; the churches of the Reformation. JVloro logically, the reformers of Germany, Switzerland, France, Holland, Hungary, Scotland and other regions of the restored apostolic enlightenment, -while rejecting ■ the false principle of the episcopal fabric, rejected the fabric itself. They rightly saw that Roman Catholicism is;, the consistent develop* ment and application of medheval episcopacy and reverted to apost-olio episcopacy, which is the episcopacy of the pastor "over the parish and not-of the * Lord Bishop over ■ the diocese. Historical scholarship and logical necessity, in the adequate expression of the evangelical , principle convinced them that this is the truly historic episcopate, leading us right back to the Apostles' feet and their ordaining hands. And so to-day

we see, for example in the Scottish parish minister a: much; more < evident successor of the primitive, bishop than in My Lord Bishop of an Anglican see. , ~ The Anglican claim : is all the less reasonable when we remember that the English reformers retained • hierarchical, episcopacy from motives , not of principle, but merely of expediency., They attached no special virtue to it/but tolerated it in their anxiety to interfere as little as possible with _ the' traditional , Church polity. ,In principle, even the English reformers were Presbyterian. -'.':""' . ' ;/■-■'.••.; When, therefore, Anglicans insist on what they understand bv the historic episcopate as a necessary condition: of Church reunion, they are insisting upon what is ah anomalous feature of their,. own > Church ' and an anomalous feature to which even their own Reformation fathers attached no importance other than that of expediency. '""' Viewed from within and with the insular partiality characteristic of . the English mind, the English Church, which is, truly enough, an imposing and venerable institution, may appear the very centre of Christendom; and yet, as a matter of fact, it is already outnumbered by one of its own offshoots which has adopted Presbyterian government, the great Methodist Church, and has from the first been in ■«, minority of one among the national churches of reformed Christendom; ;. The Scottish churchman may seem to belong to a less imposing section of the Church, but ihe knows that his own national church is but

one of a grand chain of consistently reformed national churches organised more or less on Presbyterian linos and. vastly outnumbering the imposing but solitary and sisterless communion «of the kingdom south of the border. , ,-. •. These, sir, are but a few of the considerations which completely discredit the Anglican claim for reunion on an Anglican basis. If the hierarchical episcopate is to be a sine qua non, then the Church of Rome has infinitely the strongest claim to be the rallying-ground. If, on the other hand," the revived Scriptural doctrine, of. the, reformed Catholic Church is to be ' the determining factor, then the rallying-ground can hardly be other than broadly, but essentially, Presbyterian.— am, etc., W. Gray Dixon. ■__ St. ■ David's ' Manse, 'Auckland, July 19, 1901. --"-■■;■ ;„":. ; .;.;:. ■>: