XX. LETTER ON ANGLICAN ORDERS, FROM THE PEN OF THE VERY REV. J. H. NEWMAN, D.D. WITH REPLIES TO THE SAME. 1. The following, taken from THE MONTH, 1868, is reprinted verbatim: MY DEAR FATHER COLERIDGE, The Oratory, Birmingham, You ask me what I precisely mean in my Apologia Appendix p. 26, by saying, apropos of Anglican Orders, that Antiquarian arguments are altogether unequal to the urgency of visible facts."* I will try to explain : 66 I. The inquiry into Anglican orders has ever been to me of the class which I must call dreary; for it is dreary surely to have to grope into the minute intricate passages and obscure corners of past occurrences in order to ascertain whether this man was ever consecrated, or that man used a valid form, or a certain sacramental intention came up to the mark, or the report, or register of an ecclesiastical act can be cleared of suspicion. On giving myself to consider the question, I never have been able to arrive at anything higher than a probable conclusion, which is most unsatisfactory except to antiquarians, who delight in researches into the past for their own sake. The passage to which the question answered in this letter is the following, which we give here for the convenience of our readers. Dr. Newman is speaking of the Establishment:— "As to its possession of an Episcopal succession from the time of the Apostles, well, it may have it, and if the Holy See ever so decided, I will believe it, as being the decision of a higher judgment than my own; but for myself, I must have St. Philip's gift, who saw the sacerdotal character on the head of a gaily-attired youngster, before I can by my own wit acquiesce in it, for antiquarian arguments are altogether unequal to the urgency of visible facts."-Apologia, Appendix, p. 26 (1st Edition.) II. Now, on the other hand, what do I mean by "visible facts?" I mean such definite facts as throw a broad antecedent light upon what may be presumed, in a case in which sufficient evidence is not forthcoming. For instance :— (1.) The Apostolical Succession, its necessity, and its grace, is not an Anglican tradition, though it is a tradition found in the Anglican Church. By contrast, our Lord's divinity is an Anglican tradition. Every one, high and low, holds it. It is not only in Prayer Book and Catechism, but in the mouths of all professors of Anglicanism. Not to believe it is to be no Anglican, and any persons in authority, for 300 years, who were suspected to doubt or explain it away, were marked men, as Dr. Colenso is now marked. And they have been so few that they could be counted. Not such is the apostolical succession; and, considering the Church is the columna et firmamentum veritatis, and is ever bound to stir up the gift that is in her, there is surely a strong presumption that the Anglican body has not what it does not profess to have. I wonder how many of its bishops and deans hold the doctrine at this time; some who do not occur to the mind at once. One knows what was the case thirty or forty years ago by the famous saying of Blomfield, Bishop of London. (2.) If there is a true succession there is a true eucharist; if there is not a true eucharist there is no true succession. Now, what is the presumption here? I think it is Mr. Alexander Knox who says or suggests that, if so great a gift be given, it must have a custos. Who is the custos of the Anglican Eucharist? The Anglican clergy? Could I, without distressing or offending an Anglican, describe what sort of custodes they have been, and are, to their Eucharist? "O bone custos," in the words of the poet, "cui commendavi Filium meum !" Is it not charitable towards the bulk of the Anglican clergy to hope and believe that so great a treasure has not been given to their keeping? And would our Lord leave Himself for centuries in such hands? Inasmuch then as "the sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ" in the Anglican communion is without protective ritual and jealous guardianship, there seems to me a strong presumption that neither the real gift nor its appointed guardians are to be found in that communion. (3.) Previous baptism is the condition of the valid administration of the other sacraments. When I was in the Anglican Church I saw enough of the lax administration of baptism even among high churchmen, though they did not of course intend it, to fill me with great uneasiness. Of course there are definite persons whom one might point out whose baptisms are sure to be valid; but my argument has nothing to do with present baptisms. Bishops were baptized not lately but as children. The present Bishops were consecrated by other Bishops, they again. What I have seen in the Anglican Church makes it very difficult for me to deny that every now and then a Bishop was a consecrator who had never been baptized. Some Bishops have been brought up in the north as Presbyterians, others as Dissenters, others as Low Churchmen, others have been baptized in the careless perfunctory way once so common ; there is then much reason to believe that some consecrators were not Bishops, for the simple reason that, formally speaking, they were not Christians. But at least there is a great presumption that when evidently our Lord has not left a rigid rule of baptism He has not left a valid ordination. By the light of such presumptions as these I interpret the doubtful issues of the antiquarian argument, and feel deeply that if Anglican orders are unsafe with reference to the actual evidence producible for their validity, much more unsafe are they when considered in their surroundings. Most sincerely yours, JOHN H. NEwman. 2. Dr. Newman on Anglican Orders.* [The following very remarkable Letter from a distinguished clerical convert to the Roman Catholic Church has been sent to us, with the writer's permission, by the clergyman to whom it was originally addressed.] My Dear... -You ask me how Dr. Newman's recent Letter on Anglican Orders has impressed myself and those among Catholics, especially converts, whose sympathies accord with mine, and you observe at the same time that you have * The Union Review, vol. vi., pp. 549-560. London: 1868. read with considerable surprise so feeble an argument from a writer of such transcendent power. I need hardly say that any utterance of Dr. Newman's must always command the respectful attention at least of all intelligent men, whether in your Communion or in ours. It may be pretty safely assumed that whatever view he has to put forward will be stated by him with the greatest force and perspicuity which the case admits of. And his letter on Anglican Orders forms no exception. It would be very difficult, I believe, to express at once so concisely and so pointedly the utmost that can be honestly urged against the English succession by a writer who has arrived at an adverse conclusion and who has any real acquaintance with the facts. That the argument is weak, I admit, and will presently explain why I think so. But that is not the writer's fault. I. Into what he calls the "antiquarian," and what I should prefer to call the historical argument, Dr. Newman declines to enter, though he implies, if I rightly understand him, that the "probable conclusion" from it is favourable to the validity of Anglican Orders, and that supposing the historical evidence was "sufficient"-i.e. of course morally conclusive-there would be no room for introducing such "antecedent presumptions" as he has alone dealt with. On the other hand, supposing the historical evidence to break down, any reference to such collateral topics would obviously be superfluous. Now my own conviction has always been, as you are aware, that the probability in favour of English Orders, as gathered from the direct evidence, amounts to moral certainty, which is the highest kind of certainty attainable in such questions. I have therefore myself no more doubt of their validity than I have of the validity of the Orders of the Catholic Church or of the Greeks. And all I have read and heard on the subject, which I have had opportunities of discussing with many Catholic divines, both English and foreign-most of whom took the opposite sidehas confirmed me in that conviction. But it is no part of my business here to enter upon the historical argument, on which however the whole question really hinges, nor would it be possible to do so to any purpose within the limits of a single letter. Meanwhile you will not have failed to observe that the fact of Dr. Newman's pointedly refusing to lay any stress on that argument as against your Orders, is in itself very significant; and it is worth remembering that the line of a posteriori objections, which he has felt compelled exclusively to rely upon, was never broached or thought of till the attempt to discredit the succession on historical grounds, and especially by the famous Nag's Head fable, had become desperate. II. We have then now to consider the "three presumptions" which Dr. Newman urges on the adverse side. It will be best to take them in his own order, for the arrangement is not accidental. He begins with the weakest point, and winds up with the strongest. It is hardly necessary to say that all of them have long been as familiar to my mind as to yours, for they have been alleged over and over again during the last twenty years by successive assailants of Anglican Orders, and constitute in fact what may be called the stock popular arguments on the subject. But though there is nothing new in the matter, it acquires that freshness in the method of statement which belongs to everything which comes from Dr. Newman's pen. I am however simply stating the impression left by his letter, not only on my mind but on that of others whose judgment is far weightier than my own, when I say that in giving to this collateral line of argument the utmost force and clearness of expression it is capable of, he has only illustrated more clearly its inherent weakness. (1.) The first point need not detain us long. Whether or no the Apostolical Succession be a "tradition of," or only "in, the Anglican Church," or neither, cannot surely affect the existence of the succession one way or the other. If not a single Bishop on the bench believed in it (to put the extremest hypothesis) that would not disprove their possession of the gift, as neither would the belief of the whole Episcopate avail one iota to supply its absence. Take a parallel case: Baptismal Regeneration is certainly not a tradition either "of" or "in" the Wesleyan body. On the contrary, it would be repudiated by every minister and member of that sect. Yet Dr. Newman will not deny that, wherever the essentials of the Sacrament are complied with, the gift is really conferred through the ministry of Wesleyan preachers. The same principle will apply to the transmission of the priesthood in the Church of England. It is not therefore important to examine the accuracy of Dr. Newman's estimate of the facts, though I am disposed to think with you that he has overstated the case when he speaks of the |