earth, because He Himself personally reigns in heaven and controls purgatory. I am reminded of Hobbes's argument in the Leviathan, that Christ has no kingdom upon earth at present because He is to reign after the day of judgement,

10. Birmingham

Against unity in Church government the Bishop alleges a passage from St. Augustine in Ps. lvi. 1, and another from St. Hilary, de Trin. viii. 5, 8 (pp. 34, 211). In these two passages there is question of the union of all the baptized with one another and with Christ. The Bishop of Rome is, as men say in the streets, "not in it," except in so far as he is baptized among the rest. But other bishops are 66 not in it" either. There is no mention of episcopacy, for the excellent reason that SS. Augustine and Hilary are not treating of Church government. In their ignoring of the question of ecclesiastical hierarchy the two quotations are not more anti-Papal than they are anti-episcopal. We read in Hudibras

"The oyster-women locked their fish up,
And left their stalls to cry, No bishop!"

May there not be lurking in the purlieus of Birmingham some posterity of those unprelatical fishwives? And ought such dangerous elements of the population to be encouraged by quotations from the Fathers?

§ II. Unity a more Rudimentary Note than Holiness

"There have been times when the Church has been extraordinarily corrupt without losing that intrinsic holiness which belongs to her. . . . She no more ceases to be one' by outward divisions than she ceases to be 'holy,' by tolerating sin. . . . No one who studies Church history can be surprised that a Church which has so often looked so utterly unholy . . . should also have grown to look disunited (pp. 29, 30).

According to the Penny Catechism, the intrinsic holiness which belongs to the Church consists in this, that "she teaches a holy doctrine, invites all to holiness of life, and is distinguished by the eminent holiness of so many thousands of her children." This intrinsic holiness the Church has never lost, not even in the dark days when bad priests were everywhere in evidence, and wicked prelates

sat on the highest thrones, e.g., the middle of the tenth century, or the sixty years preceding the Reformation. Not even then was she "utterly unholy," not even then did she "tolerate sin." The scandal in those days was precisely that the private life of the rulers of the Church was in contradiction with their profession and public teaching. When practice was at its worst, the standard of holiness was ever before men's eyes as of old. Thousands lived up to it, and cries for Reform were unceasing.

The Church has never ceased to be holy. But there is a way in which she would cease to be one, and that is by becoming two. By Bishop Gore's showing there are two Churches, not meeting in any higher unity on earth, in Birmingham alone; and Churches, I know not how many, similarly severed from one another all the world over. The Church on earth, at this rate, has lost the note of unity. Holiness, indeed, not unity, is the final end and perfection of the Church : nevertheless unity is a more rudimentary, elemental, primary note of the Church than holiness; and the privation of a primary constituent, as Aristotle says, is a more grievous loss than the privation of

final perfection. It is worse for a man to be without feet than without education. The statesman's first care is order, and, after that, happiness; and though happiness is better than order, anarchy is worse than discontent.

"I pray for those also who through their word shall believe in me; that they all may be one, as thou, Father, in me, and I in thee; that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that thou hast sent me" (John xvii. 20, 21). So then the unity of the Church- -a visible unity, otherwise it would be no evidence to the world; a unity of the component parts of the Church on earth, one with another, for that alone makes visible evidence any connexion with Christ and the next world is invisible; a unity so perfect as to be compared with that of the Father with the Son-this is to be the standing evidence to the world for all time of the truth of Christianity.

That may be known for the one Church of Christ on earth, in which there is visibly

66

one body and one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism" (Eph. iv. 4, 5). For this Christ prayed as the Son of God; and when our High Priest so prayed solemnly and officially, He prayed also

effectually, and was

reverence

(Heb. v. 7).

"heard for his

§ 12. Lerins again

"It cannot be conceived how a document more out of date, more crude, more unsympathetic, more unpastoral, than the present Encyclical [Leo XIII's Providentissimus Deus, 1893, on the Study of Holy Scripture] could have been issued."

The Encyclical has now been twelve years under the consideration of Catholic scholars. They have not found it “out of date," "crude," or "unpastoral." May I suggest that the writer of this fierce denunciation should subscribe to the Revue Biblique, and be careful to secure the back numbers since 1893 ?

One thing I cannot but wonder, that the Pope should here be so vehemently found fault with for his strict adherence in face of the Higher Criticism to the Vincentian rule, quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus.

§ 13. What Cranmer wanted to do and did

I come finally to what must be to the Bishop the harassing and thorny topic of