abolition of subscription was proposed by some, revision
of the Articles by others, no one, so far as it appears,
proposed the more obvious alternative of modifying
the wording of the terms in which subscription was
made. But nothing of any kind was done. The
bishops, upon consultation, thought it advisable to
leave matters alone. They may have been right.
But, throughout the greater part of the century, leaving
alone was too much the wisdom of the leaders and rulers
of the English Church.
In all the course of its long history, before and
after the Reformation, the National Church of England
has never, perhaps, occupied so peculiarly isolated
a place in Christendom as at the extreme end of the
last century and through the earlier years of the present
one. At one or another period it may have been
more jealous of foreign influence, more violently
antagonistic to Roman Catholics, more intolerant of
Dissent, more wedded to uniformity in doctrine and
discipline. But at no one time had it stood,
as a Church, so distinctly apart from all other Communions.
If the events of the French Revolution had slightly
mitigated the antipathy to Roman Catholicism, there
was still not the very slightest approximation to
it on the part of the highest Anglicans, if any such
continued to exist. The Eastern Church, after
attracting a faint curiosity through the overtures
of the later Nonjurors, was as wholly unknown and
unthought of as though it had been an insignificant
sect in the furthest wilds of Muscovy. All communications
with the foreign Protestant Churches had ceased.
It had beheld, after the death of Wesley, almost the
last links severed between itself and Methodism.
It had become separated from Dissenters generally by
a wider interval. Its attitude towards them was
becoming less intolerant, but more chilled and exclusive.
The Evangelicals combined to some extent with Nonconformists,
and often met on the same platforms. But there
was no longer anything like the friendly intercourse
which had existed in the beginning and in the middle
of last century between the bishops and clergy of
the ‘moderate’ party in the Church on the
one hand, and the principal Nonconformist ministers
on the other. Comprehension—until
the time of Dr. Arnold—was no longer discussed.
Occasional conformity had in long past time received
the blow which deprived it of importance. Again,
the Church of England was still almost confined, except
by its missions, within the limits of the four seas.
Pananglicanism was a term yet to be invented.
The Colonial empire was still in its infancy, and
its Church in tutelage. There was a sister Church
in the United States. But the wounds inflicted
in the late war were scarcely staunched; and the time
had not arrived to speak of cordiality, or of community
of Church interests. It was from Scottish, not
from English hands, that America received her first
bishop.
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