REFORMATION AND REUNION 1

N the April number of this Review, my friend Mr.

May number, Lord Halifax, certainly not less a friend, pleaded for Reunion with Rome. The two essays afforded an interesting contrast of thought and temper. Each showed intelligence, information, sincerity, and above all a sense of the supreme importance of religion even in the life of this world. But the point of view, the mental environment, the antecedent bias, of the two writers were strikingly dissimilar, and my purpose in this paper is to enquire whether either attains, not to the whole truth of the matter, for that is not given to man, but to so much of the truth as can create a better understanding between members of the Church of England and their fellow-Christians in other communions.

I begin with Mr. Birrell's essay headed "What, then, did happen at the Reformation?" and here, turning for a moment from substance to method, I hope that Mr. Birrell, who has a scholar-like knowledge of his Dickens, will not be angry if I say that his mode of interrogative argument reminds me of Rosa Dartle. He is so surprisingly ingenuous. He is so conscious of his ignorance. He asserts nothing. He asks much. He insinuates more. "What, then," he asks, "did really happen at the Reformation?" He would not for the world say 1 The Nineteenth Century, 1896.

what, though he has a little notion of his own, and does not mind our seeing what it is. Of Miss Dartle we read that "she never said anything she wanted to say outright, but hinted it, and made a great deal more of it by this practice." Thus :

"Oh, really? You know how ignorant I am, and that I only ask for information, but isn't it always so? . . . I want to be put right if I am wrong-isn't it really?" "Really what?" said Mrs. Steerforth.

"Oh! you mean it's not!" returned Miss Dartle. "Well, I'm very glad to hear it! Now I know what to do! That's the advantage of asking."

Similarly Mr. Birrell, when asking what really did happen at the Reformation, has a notion that a good deal happened; that, in particular, the Mass ceased to be said in the Church of England; and that, with its departure, came a severance alike from mediæval England and from modern Rome, which it is idle for Anglicans to ignore and impossible to repair.

This seems to be the idea at the back of Mr. Birrell's mind, but, Dartle-like, he forbears, out of deference to Anglican feelings, to formulate it. To him, as a Nonconformist, really things look a little as if it were so; but he very much wishes to be put right if he is wrong. He "only asks for information," and if any one can show him good reasons for a different view he will be eager to exclaim, "Oh! you mean it's not! Well, I'm very glad to hear it! Now I know what to do! That's the advantage of asking." To lead him to this happy state of intellectual satisfaction and moral peace is my immediate object.

Now, broadly speaking, I would venture to tell Mr. Birrell that the following were the most important of the many and far-reaching events which happened at the period vaguely known as the Reformation :

1. The translation of the Bible.

2. The revision of the Liturgy and Offices.
3. The dissolution of the monasteries.

4. The permission of marriage to the clergy.

5. The repudiation of the Pope's authority. These five great changes will, I think, be found to contain within themselves the germs of all that distinguishes the modern from the medieval Church of England, and together they constitute my general reply to Mr. Birrell's artless question. For my own part, I regard the change which I have put last in the list—the repudiation of the Pope's authority-as infinitely the most important. Mr. Birrell, on the other hand, seems to think that the most important is that which I have numbered 2; and I will therefore examine it a little more in detail.

When I speak of the "Revision" of the Liturgy and Offices, I include "translation," and I use "Liturgy " in its strict sense, as meaning the service of the Holy Communion, to which the "Offices" of Morning and Evening Prayer are ancillary. The substitution of a vernacular liturgy for one performed in an unknown tongue was an immense change, but, as Mr. Birrell does not concern himself with it, I may pass it by. Again, he disregards the ancillary Offices, and so may I. He concentrates his whole attention on the Mass, and I will do the same. "It is the Mass," he says, "that matters"; "It is the Mass that makes the difference." And here it seems to me that Mr. Birrell attaches to the word "Mass" some occult or esoteric meaning, for which, as far as I know, he has no warrant. The etymology of the word is obscure; the very language from which it is derived has been disputed. Our forefathers did not trouble themselves with these linguistic problems, but used the word-a short, convenient,

1

practically English word-to signify the Holy Eucharist. When Sir Walter Scott describes the Lady Rowena as having got wet in returning from "an Evening Mass," he presumably adopts the less exact use which we find in "Romeo and Juliet," and which applied the word to any form of Divine Service. But before the Reformation all public worship centred in the service of the altar, and the Mass was the Eucharist. The Reformers regarded the words as synonymous; and the Prayer-book of 1549 sets forth "the Supper of the Lord, and the Holy Communion, commonly called the Mass."

The Mass, then, is the service of the Holy Communion— nothing more, and nothing less; but Mr. Birrell reads into the phrase some other meaning of his own. Abandoning for the moment all argument, historical, theological, or etymological, he makes a sudden incursion into the region of the emotions, and cries out that he can feel the presence of the Mass at Havre and can feel the absence of it at Cromer. Well, it is not for me to disparage the emotions, or the employment of them in religion. Once Robert Browning, looking on with a friend at High Mass in a French cathedral, at the moment of the elevation gripped the friend's arm and exclaimed, "My dear Arthur, this is too good not to be true." But an emotion of this kind affords only a sandy foundation for the faith and practice of a lifetime; and English Churchmen will look, through the splendid accessories which so impressed the picturesque sensibility of Mr. Browning and Mr. Birrell, to the unseen Realities which they enshrine. We turn from the sound of the Sanctbell, on which Mr. Birrell is eloquent, and the Divine fragrance of the censer's wafted breath, to the plain oaken table, the "fair white linen cloth," the worn silver vessels of some English village-church, untouched as yet by liturgical or æsthetic revival; and, making

our appeal, not to accessories or trappings however suitable or beautiful or instructive, but to the recorded words and acts of our Lord, to the unbroken usage of His Church, and to the letter of our English liturgy, we reach a definite and reasoned conclusion. It may be formulated in the words of a writer whom I feel instinctively sure that Mr. Birrell dislikes: "This day, as I believe, the Blessed Sacrament has been in the church before our eyes, and what can you or I desire more?"1 So far, I do not understand that Mr. Birrell disagrees with me. Like a prudent man, he declines to challenge the historic continuity of English Orders. With a dulycommissioned ministry, the words of institution, and the prescribed elements, we have the essentials of a valid Eucharist; but Mr. Birrell seems to say that this is not enough to disprove that organic severance between the mediæval and the modern Church of England which he would like to establish. A valid Eucharist we may have, but we have lost the Sacrifice of the Mass, and this he seeks to prove by (A) the changes in our Eucharistic service; (B) the changes in the Ordinal; (C) the generel intention of those who were parties to these changes; (D) the teaching of the Church of England since the Reformation. Let us examine these proofs one by one.

(A) Mr. Birrell instances, as changes fatal to any sacrificial view of our modern rite, the omission of the Invocation of the Holy Spirit on the elements, and the omission of the Prayer of Oblation.

With regard to the Invocation, it is certainly a liturgical feature of great antiquity and wide prevalence : its insertion in our Office was a gain and its omission a loss. But the Church of Rome does not possess it; and, if it is essential to the Sacrifice of the Mass, Mr. 1 "John Inglesant," vol. i., ch. iv.