THE BISHOP OF LONDON AND THE REUNION QUESTION.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 374, 18 April 1908, Page 3

THE BISHOP OF LONDON AND THE REUNION QUESTION.

“ My point is that visible reunion does not seem possible yet, and we must not encourage any short-cuts to it. As an illustration of this, I found in Montreal a movement which I ventured to discourage. The idea of it was that the Protestant communions might all join together with our own communion on the understanding that for the time being those ministers who had not received Ordination at the hands of a Bishop should be allowed to officiate in our churches, so long as they agreed that in the future all ministers must be episcopally ordained. The other Christian bodies were very doubtful about the arrangement, and I found that large numbers of our people, quite rightly in my opinion, thought it impossible ; because it. would be giving up a great principle which we stand for—the continuity of our orders —for the sake of harmony. Therefore, I did something towards stopping what I thought was a misjudged movement. There is no good in trying to make people believe that that there is no difference when there is a great difference. It was rather a corrective to this, when I went to Richmond, to find the American .Chinch tremendously keen about celebrating the way in which they had received their historic orders, and to find that in Evangelical Virginia they applauded to the echo, at my historical lecture, when I asked, ‘ Why am I not a Roman Catholic ?’ and gave the answer, ‘ Because I am an English Catholic.’ The whole of that meeting rose and cheered, and in the course of my hour’s lecture on the Principles of the Anglican Communion, the meeting seemed entirely to agree with the principles I laid down.” “For us to encourage short cuts to reunion, because we dislike and abhor the disunion of Christendom, is, I believe, to forfeit the union which in the providence of God may be in store for us in the future. I do not at all see my way to any short cut to reunion which practically throws over what Bishop Eightfoot said the Church of England stands for—historic orders in the one hand and the open Bible in the other. We must have both. I found at Richmond, where some thought that the Church of England began with Henry VIII., that it was extremely important to put before them the elementary reasons as to why I was not a Roman Catholic and why I was not a dissenter. And I tried to explain these things to the Convention, because at the end of 300 years it was important for them to realise Why they, being numerically a comparatively small body, should continue a separate religious existence. Therefore I told them I am not a Dissenter, because I do not dissent from the Creeds of the Church, which form our battle-cry. I do not dissent from Orders ofßishops, Priests, and Deacons, which I find have been from the beginning. I do not dissent from the Sacraments, which were instituted by Christ Himself. Ido not dissent from the Church prayers, though I use extempore prayer constantly, and think we ought to use it in much of our work, but when I come to worship God with other people in the church, I like to have a beautiful service ‘ hot with the breath of ten thousand saints ’ —the same old prayers used once in Latin and now in English. I love them, and am thankful for them. We cannot give up the beautiful old historic prayers of our Church. As I put these things before them, I carried my audience of over five thousand persons enthusiastically with me. And then I asked why am I not a Roman Catholic, and I give the answer which I have quoted —but it needs amplifying. What does an English Catholic stand for ? First of all, the open Bible and the historic orders.”