THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume I, Issue 33, 13 December 1873, Page 11

THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH.

('The Tablet.')

The great crime of the Church of Rome, as every right-thinking Englishman knows, is to have " corrupted " both the form and the oreed of the Primitive Church. The newspapars say so, and they are not often mistaken. A good many preachers agree with the newspapers. Yet as nothing seems to be easier than to " revive " the Primitive Church, an operation which a multitude of " pure and reformed" communities have effected with complete success, the Church of Rome has not done so much harm after all. At all events fhe mischief has been extensively repaired. It is quite astonishing what a number of undoubtedly Primitive Churches there are just now in the world. In certain soils they seem to be a natural growth, and spring up spontaneously. There are said to be about one hundred and twenty sects, each of which, though differing from all the rest, boasts to have reproduced, to the great confusion of the Church of Rome, exactly the faith and discipline of the Primitive Ohurch. And they are all equally confident, by clear demonstration of Holy Writ, that theirs is the true and genuine article, and that every other is spurious. There is our old friend in the Church of England, which everybody admits— at least everybody who has the good fortune to beloug to it— to be an exact copy of the original institution. The resemblance is perfect in every particular. We must suppose, therefore, if we have the privilege to be Anglicans, th it in the Primitive Church, which we have so happily revived in our England, it was usual to practise Confession, and to revile it at the same time ; to exalt the Priesthood, and to laugh at it ; to adore the Real Presence, aud to ridicule it ; to believe in Regeneration by Baptism, and to deny it ; to abhor heretics, and to remain ia communion with them j to call schism a crime, and to rejoice in every fresh example of it ; to consider unity essential, and to be in communion with nothing and nobody. The Primitive Ohurch may have been this, as iis Anglican restorers appear to believe, but perhaps the evidence of the fact is not quite decisive. Then thero is the great Russian, or ''Orthodox," communion, ■which is also entirely Primitive, though ifc owes its present form to Peter the Great, nnd is divided into as many irreconcileable sects as the Anglican. It has not only seDarated itself from Constantinople, which it used to call its source aud mother, but has persuaded Greece and Bulgaria to do likewise. According to the Russian view of the Primitive Church, that institution was governed by a Tsar, with an official " Holy Synod," submissive to his faintest whisper, and directed by one of his aides-de-camp. No doubt the Apostles would recognize this at once as the very Church which they founded. St. Petersburg

would be to them an improved Jerusalem. Perhaps the aide-de-camp would puzzle him a little, particularly if he treated them as he does hi* own Bishops — whioh would hardly be a safe proceeding — while the Tsar might possibly suggest unpleasant reminiscence! of another Cmsar with whom they were more familiar. Other Primitive Churches, which are neither national nor official, and have no wish to be co, consider priests a delusion, Bishops an abomination, and Sacraments " a fond thing vainly " invented." I« it not so written in the Scriptures ? Their prophet is the mild CaMu, the diffident Enox, or the respectable Wesley. They all profess to be disciples of Paul," and do not care much about Peter. The Dslhngerists have just made quite a new Primitive Church, which differs a good deal from all others, but has special merit* of its own. According to its more or less inspired founder, the original Primitive Church remained in its perfection till after the Council of Trent, of which the canons ought ta'be reverently received by all christain men ; then was totally lost to view till about the year 1872 ; when it was gloriously revived by % few G-erman professors, the only people in the world who really knew anything about it, aided by some gentlemen of Holland, particular favourites of Heaven, and almost as wisa, modest, virtuous, and " not as other men are," as the illuminati of Bonn and Munich. Amid so many Primitive Churches, by which the corruptions of the Church of Borne are so happily repaired, and of which we may hope to see a good many more if we live a few years longer, we must not forget the Quaker?, -whose only fault is that they claim to be more Primitive than all the rest, which is perhaps invidious. Let us notice also respectfully the Irvingites, who justly resent the pretensions of the Quakers, since they alone have revived, not only the Primitive Church, but even the original Apostles, besides angels and archangels, and we know not what else besides, If any restoration might seem to defy competition, it is surely this. Yet while doing full justice to the Irvingites, and to a host of others, among whom our admiration is impartially distributed, it must be admitted if there is anything in a name, that the "Primitive Methodists " beat them all. It is evident, then, that nothing is easier, as we have already observed, than to revive the Primitive Church, in spite of the impotent stratagems and general misconduct of the incorrigible Church of Borne. And this is surely a consoling fact, upon which our fallen race may be warmly congratulated. Let Borne do what she likes, she cannot extinguish the Primitive Church, but only creates n dozen in place of one. People may say, indeed, for there is no limit to human p jrvwBity, that as these new Primitive Churches differ from one another quite as freely as they do from the Catholic Church, and on questions of the most tremendous gravity, they cannot possibly be all true portraits of the same original ; and further, that if any one of them is a good likeness to it, all the rest must te horrible caricatures. But the objection may be dismissed as weak and trifling. May it not have been the particular merit of the Primitive Church that it could resemble hundred different things at once ? "We offer this suggestion as our personal contribution to the general subject. It is true that, as far as we know, no one has yet discovered an animal which is at the same time a fish, an ox, a rat, a zebra and a pelican. If the Primitive Church really resembles the multitudinous sects— Russian, Anglican, Irvingite, and the rest — which claim to be its mirror and faithful presentment, it must have been all these animals at once, and a good many more. But in that case we must shift our conclusion and say, we hope with the concurrence of our Protestant readers that the Roman Church can hardly be blamed for " corrupting " it; off the the face of the earth, and subtituting for such a Primitive Ohurch a less grotesque monster. On the whole we advise our contemporaries, who will certainly not take our advice, to say as little as possible about the Primitive Church. They will only get themselves into difficulties. No man living can belong, in any sense whatever, to the Chmcb. of the first century, unless he belongs to that of the nineteenth. It is not permitted to the British citizen to transfer his allegiance from Victoria-to William Rufus or Canute, in spite of the great merits of those remote sovereigns j and the British Christian is subject to the same law. If he is not loyal to the Church of his own age, he is a rebel against the Church of every other. She is no more capable of change or corruption than her founder ; and if St. Peter who was the first Vicar of Christ, should revisit the earth, it is certain that, in spite of the attractions of so many (Primitive Churches of recent origin, he would recognize that one alone, against which all the rest are in revolt, and would take up his abode with the prisoner of the Tatican. We suspect that in their secret heart most Protestants are of the same opinion. If some, for whom the Uving and incorruptible Spouse of Christ is not sufficiently pure and chaste, have gone back to what they call the Primitive Church, others, by a more violent recoil, have gone a little further. Weavy of so many " puve and reformed " Churohes of which the multiplicity serve 3to convince them that Christianity is a fable, they have relapsed into the paganism which was an older form of human belief. We must avow a certain sympathy with these exChristians, who have strayed like comets beyond our theological orbit and passed into the far-off regions of space. They are not wholly without excuse; If we believed with them that the Christian Church is one of the most contemptible of human institutions, always falling into errors and corruptions, and only existing to be periodically "reformed"— -like a house in want of whitewash op a bungling Act of Par-liament,—-by any adventurous spirit, Anglican, Dollingerist, or Irringice who feels mov^d to undertake thejob, we should probably think of the Christian religion and its Founder pretty much as they do. Men who have been gravely assured, for example, ever since they were born, that the Anglican Establishment, with ita twenty different religions, is a genuine representative of the Primitive Church, may well refuse to admit that the latter has any claim to their respect or that tho Almighty could have anything to do with it. Our esteemed contemporary the « Pall Mall Gazette ' is evidently of this opinion. He goes in for " Magna Roma," and that sort of thing. The State, he says, i 8i 8 more sacred than any Church, and, considering what he understands by a Churchi

•we quite agree with him. He also objects to any rival of religion, par* ticularly in France, which ought to know better, and accounts for it in a very ingenious way. " Religion has become a respectable and a. loyal thing since the Government are religibdsl" He admits indeed, that the explanation only augments the difficulty, "for it used' to be oaid that the French vfoiild acwpt anything on earth from 'their Q-oyernmeot except spiritual dictation." But he is not obliged to-ex-plain his- own contradictions. That a Christian nation, chastised for its sins by an almost unexampled humiliatior, should comprehend the lesson which it has received, and endeavor to make its peace with God by works <jrf penance and renewed faith, does not even occur to' this ex-Christitrt as a possible explanation of the present attitude of< France, for whose regeneration prayers are- now being' offered throughout Christendom. He' does cot mash believe in repentance) an emotion feo which he is not personally subject, and so proceeds to account for its existence in Eranee by " the influence Of the clergy," and of " the numerous charitable associations under .priestly control ; " — the hundred deputies who lately addressed the Holy Father being probably in receipt of parochial relief, and grateful for it. They are paid to be pious, like a writer in the ' Standard ' whom we have often the advantage of quoting, he considers that religion, is "only" "clericalism," and that when a man begins- to say his prayers he is the victim of a "clerical reaction." This able journalist has, evidently gpt along way beyond the Primitive Cburch. Speaking of " the German and Dutch people who call themselves 'Old Catholics, 1 " the c Church, Herald ' Observes- that '* a new schism —for that is. what it amounts- to-Mias been formerly 1 inaugurated by tihe consecration of Bishop Beinkens." We commend this remark of, the Anglican journal to the irrepressible theologian of the < Saturday Review,' whose own particular " Primitive Church," began yesterday and will end to-morrow, and whose judicious creed contains only this article ? "-There is one God,, and Reinkens is " His prophet — vice Pollinger superseded."