OUR PROTESTANT CONTEMPORARIES.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 74, 26 September 1874, Page 9

OUR PROTESTANT CONTEMPORARIES.

MANCHESTER THEOLOGIANS.

Wj3 must ask our readers to accompany us oneo more to Manchester^ It is not generally considered aii attractive place, nnd a tourist in search of the picturesque would probably avoid it ; but it has a hu<*» population, hurrying, like the rest of the world, to their final destiny, or waiting to be overtaken by it, and to thoughtful observers will jusb now repay a visit. It seems to bo chiefly occupied afc this moment, if we may judge by fhe space allotted to the subject by the local newspapers, with a more or less intelligent comparison of the merits of its two Bishops: the Catholic Bishop of Salford, and the Protestant Bishop of Manchester. The questions debated between them are of exceeding gravity, and deserve the attention of a larger audience than. even the united boroughs of Manchester and Salford can supply. We begin with an advertisement. It announces a lecture by the l?ev. Brooke Herford, a Unitarian Minister, with this seductive title r " Bishop v. Bishop ; the Rival Orthodoxies compared by a Heretic.'* The lecture is before us. "It is rather refreshing," Mr Herford observes, after being so long snubbed by a too prosperous,Estiblishment, " and calhd schismatics by the Church of England," " to find a third party stepping in — a party of unimpeachable venerableness and respectability— and quietly setting dowa the Church of England aa that Church had set down the Dissenters, treating it as merely a form of dissent, not a real clergy at all, and its Bishops not only nob Bishops, but not even priests." Much exhilarated oy this agreeable illustration of the lex ialionis, Mr Herfjrd avows his opinion, wlrch is also ours, that Dr Vauglmn is the more logical ecclesiastic." He comprehends, like the • Westminster lieview,' that Logic and Anglicanism dwell in separate spheres, nnd never move iv the same orbit, even by accident. No Anglican can open his mouth without contradicting some other Anglican, even when he does not contradict himself. Bab Mr Herford adds that his " feeling," as far as he has any, is rather with Dr Fraser, because he has affinities with all sorts of Christians, including oven, "the persecuted Cameronians," and wishes "to make his Church, position broader," though it would seem to be broad enough already ; while Dr Vaughan " has made hiinsolf felt in exactly the opposite way," taking the same narrow view of " sects " and those who belong to them as St. Peter and St. Paul, holding the exploded idea that thero is only " one faith " and " one baptism," and being incurably intolerant of those who corrupt the one and defile the other. In spite, however, of general sympathy with Dr Eraser, apparently on the ground that ha believes nothiug in particular, except that the Church of England is rather a credit to its founders, Mr Herford is a little disturbed by his total indifference to lo;;ic. "Dr Fraser said," he remarks, " that afc the Reformation his Church cast off the errors and corruptions of the Church of Rome. But how did it know what were ' errors and corruptions ?'" It must have had some means of knowing, he supposes but what were they ? How came it that the Church of Rome did not possess them too ? Why was the Church of Rouie, which was founded by Apostles, produced a legion of saints and martyr?, and converted all Europe, less qualified to judge what was truth than a Church founded fifteen centuries later by a few sensual apostates, which " owed its origin," as Mr Lecky says, "to the intrigues of a corrupt court," never produced either a saint or a martyr, and never converted anybody -whatever ? Mr Herford would like to have an answer to this question, and so should we. If the oldest and largest Church in the world, by whose ministry alone Q-od has evangelized the nations, fell into " error and corruption?," whab is the value of Christianity ? And why should modern ser , to whom God promised nothing bub judgment, be able to detect flu? orror which she, to whom He promised everything, was not able l~ avoid? All that Dr Froser cau say in reply, Mr Herford continues, is this, that his Uhurch "found oub what -was contrary to the Bible, and. cast that off. But how \»ere those corruptions discovered to be contrary to the Bible ? " Evidently, he concludes, " by the private judgment of Christian people," whether Anglicans or Unitarians, " reading the BiMe and judging what was there taught." It follows that Dr Fraser and his co-religionists, in, spite of nil their fine phrases about the "Primitive Church," are absolutely of one mind with Mr Herford, and that for both alike the command of Our Lord to " hear the Church means, when judiciously interpreted," leo the Church hear you, for I have given you the power to find oub what is " contrary to the Bible, though I have not given it toiler." If any man in his senses can believe this, we should like to ask him how he can possibly believe in G-od ? It is due to Mr Herford to add that he seems to suspect, in a confused sort of a way, that such a Church and such a founder as the Anglican theory supposes would be worthy of each other. For our part -we are of opinion that the world would be well rid of them both. '• But still,,' he adds, and here we must take lea7e of him, " Dr Fraser claims that, whatever other Churches may be, his is a Church on whose teachings the soul niny rest. Well I ask for the teachings in which we may rest. But here I find the beat and most genuine men in this very Church all differing among themselves" — in spite of their remarkable gift in detecting the " errors .and corruptions ' of the rest of the world — " far more than Catholics do. Dr Pusey, Dean Stanley, Bishop Fraser — whom must we believe ? " As this question is too difficult for us, we must leave the trio of genuine Anglicans to settle it between them. — ' Tablet.*