Page:Place & Influence of Church Congresses.djvu/12

 I shall, of course, regard the question from the only point of view which I can occupy in honesty to my own convictions, that of a follower of the so-called High Church party. I am not ashamed at owning my side; but in so doing I shall labour for peace, not controversy. I am always more glad to discover one point of agreement than to assure myself of ten of divergence among the sections of a body whose Divine mission is to dwell together in unity; and it is mainly because I believe that Church Congresses are engines of agreement, and not of divergence, that I trouble either myself or yourselves with their affairs.

To begin with the material influence of the Congresses on the movement within our Church, we must take in that Church in all the complexity of its various aspects, both as the Established Church of England and as the Anglican Communion. These two ideas are not indissolubly connected either in theory or in fact, but they are quite compatible, and, as I venture to contend — with, I hope, the unanimous assent of all Churchmen in England, and with that of a vast multitude of those outside of it — it is in the highest degree desirable to preserve them in their connection. Taking note of these conditions, I claim for Church Congresses that they tend to secure that the Church of England shall, in preserving its more strictly ecclesiastical aspects, continue to be directly recognised in the National Constitution as the religious Establishment of the country, and that while it continues to be the religious Establishment it should hold fast to its peculiar ecclesiastical characteristics.

Fundamentally different in principle, as would be a religious Establishment which derives its constitution from some act of the State, and a Church claiming the allegiance of baptised Christians, as a branch of the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic body, the two communities can, without doubt, be moulded so as to present identical external features. A Bishop is an expedient chief officer, whether he be a delegate