candidate for ordination because he does not accept the Gospel according
to Westcott and Hort, or the Gospel according to an unauthorized though
scholarly knot of men called the Revisers? Impossible! all Christendom
would cry shame upon us. On the whole, we seem driven to the conclusion
that no candidate for Anglican ordination can be reasonably rejected for
believing that parts of the Bible are spurious or un-historical,
provided that he is willing to read in the presence of the congregation
the portions of Scripture appointed by the Church.
If the test of miracles fails, and if the test of an infallible book
fails, so too does failure await the test of an infallible Creed. It
would be, at all events, departing strangely from the spirit of the
Reformers and from the spirit of the Articles, to allow men laxity as
regards the interpretation of the Scriptures, which are regarded as
specially inspired, and yet to pin them to the letter of the Creeds,
which are regarded as being authoritative because they are based on the
Scriptures. If a candidate were to tell you, his Bishop, that “he
accepted the Resurrection of Christ, and even of Christ’s body, but that
he could not honestly say that Christ rose on the third day; for Christ
was buried on the evening of Friday, and rose early on the morning of
Sunday, that is to say, on the second day,” you would perhaps reason
with him, and say that it was the Jewish way of reckoning; and if he
were then to reply to you that to the greater part of the congregation
this way of reckoning was unknown, and that the phrase might therefore
convey a false impression—what would you say to this ultra-conscientious
young man? This probably: that “the Creeds of Christendom could not be
disturbed on account of the eccentricities of well-meaning individuals;
that, if this was his only obstacle, you, his Bishop, could take upon
yourself to justify him in repeating these words as the mouthpiece of
the congregation; that it was quite open to him to explain the true
meaning of the words from the pulpit; and that little misunderstandings
of this kind, if indeed there was danger of any, were insignificant as
compared with belief in the essential fact that Jesus rose from the
dead.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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