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FALSE AND TRUE METHODS OF INTERPRETATION. 501

Book weighs but little against the fact that they superseded it. Ἐν τῷ λέγειν καινήν, πεπαλαίωκεν τὴν πρώτην.

My object in making these remarks has been to register a protest-a temperate one, I would hope-against what I cannot but regard as an unsatisfactory mode of commenting on the Prayer-Book. I admit readily that there is room in the Church of England for more doctrinal schools than one; and that being so, it is necessary that each school should have a theory for reconciling its own belief with the formularies. But this, it seems to me, is a separate question from the interpretation of the formularies, and ought to be kept distinct. Let us first interpret the formularies according to the strict rules of interpretation; let us then consider what degree of license may be fairly claimed in each particular case by members of a Church which has never been without parties, and has passed at different times under the more especial influence of one or other of them. Even as interpreters we might often disagree; but we should profit increasingly by each other's labours, and we should learn to recognise more thoroughly the common ground on which we stand.

1 If Parliament were to enact that certain formularies, imposed by its authority, were to be understood in a certain sense, that sense would be imperative, even if it did not happen to be the natural one. But a legislature is hardly likely to go to this length; and nothing short of it would interfere with the original duty of ascertaining what the formularies mean from what they say.

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BISHOP FORBES ON THE ARTICLES.

I LATELY commented in this Review on some unsatisfactory, because inexact and arbitrary, interpretations of the Communion Service.2 I now wish to call attention to a series of explanations of the Thirty-nine Articles, which appears to me to be open to a similar objection.

It would not seem to be very difficult to lay down generally what is required in a commentary on the Articles. They should be interpreted, like any other statement of opinions, according to the natural meaning of the words, taken in significant connection with each other, with their context, and, in case of doubt, with the rest of the document, recourse being had, where it may be needful, to the theological history of the time, and specially to the writings of the framers of the Articles, and of others who are known to have sympathised with them. This is the way in which the true sense of a document of the kind is likely to be ascertained; and it would seem obvious, as I have said, that it is to be employed in the present case. The meaning of the Articles being thus arrived at, it is a separate, though of course a very important, task to estimate the bearing of their meaning on the general doctrine of the Church of England, to harmonise apparently conflicting results, and to obtain a view of the mind of the Church on the various points on which questions may be raised. There is again a third inquiry which also has its place, though of an inferior and subordinate kind. There

1 Reprinted from the Contemporary Review, July 1868.

2 See preceding Article.

An Explanation of the Thirty-nine Articles, by A. P. Forbes, D.C.L., Bishop of Brechin. Oxford: Parker, 1867-1868.

HOW TO INTERPRET THE ARTICLES.

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are different schools within the Church of England, which in one form or other have existed for the last three centuries, if not for a longer period; and as it is not only possible but likely that no one of them exactly expresses the mind of the Church on all doctrinal points, it is natural to inquire what limits of divergence may be allowed to each in the case of this or that matter of belief. This is of course a casuistical question depending on many minute considerations; but it is of consequence to the whole body of churchmen, as well as to the particular section concerned, not only that it should be entertained, but that it should be determined fairly and reasonably. These, it is plain, are distinct tasks; and though the temptation may be great to confuse them in practice, I believe it is in proportion as they are kept distinct that each is likely to be satisfactorily performed.

If these remarks are true, it seems evident that a work which, like Bishop Forbes's, professes to explain the Articles on a particular theory commits a fundamental mistake. The interpretation of the Articles requires no theory, and admits none. Particular passages may be doubtful, and with reference to them these or those external considerations may be legitimately employed; but to interpret the whole in the light of an external theory is self-condemnatory. As English churchmen, we may be bound, as Bishop Forbes thinks we are, to hold what is called the Catholic theory of belief. If the Articles express that theory, they will say so when interrogated by the ordinary methods of inquiry. Protestant tradition may have encrusted them; but there are recognised, though it may be slow, methods of removing all such encrustations. If the Articles, fairly interpreted, are not Catholic, it may still be possible, by taking them in connection with other statements of the Church's belief, to

produce on the whole a Catholic result. If this again cannot be made out, it is open to contend that there are certain limits beyond the strict line of the formularies within which Catholic opinion has a standing-ground in the Church of England. But no supposed duty to Catholic truth can warrant us in explaining the Articles in any other sense than that which may appear on detailed examination to be the sense of the Articles themselves.

But it will be right to expound Bishop Forbes's theory somewhat more fully before proceeding to comment on his practice. This is indeed not so easy as it may appear at first sight, as, though he expressly states that he has a theory, the precise nature of it is not so much to be found explicitly stated in any one passage of his work as to be collected from several. I am not sure that I altogether comprehend it: I am not sure that he is in these different passages absolutely consistent with himself; but I believe that in what I am going to say I shall not far misrepresent him.

Bishop Forbes seems to arrive at his mode of interpreting the Articles, so to say, by a sort of double route. It is with him a question of duties; of duty to the Articles themselves, and of duty to Catholic belief. To the first he evidently attaches comparatively little importance. The Articles are an uninspired document, and there is a primâ facie, though it may be unavoidable, hardship in requiring assent to them. Clergymen and others are bound to them simply because they have subscribed them: the obligation is to be interpreted legally, and the document itself to be construed with a legal literalness which takes the text sentence by sentence, and does not trouble itself with deductions and implications. The plain literal and grammatical sense, interpreted by the hardest legal head, is all that we have to do with in accepting the text: and as

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BISHOP FORBES'S THEORY.

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regards the inferences, we have nothing whatever to do with them.' The duty to the Articles being thus discharged, another duty begins. The obligations of Catholic truth require that the Articles should be understood in a Catholic sense, and it is to this that the legal interpretation is calculated to pave the way. The one creates the vacuum (it is Bishop Forbes's own image applied to legal interpretation in another connection 2); the other comes and fills it. Our right to regard the Articles in this light is strengthened by historical considerations, by a view of the Elizabethan age, when they were tendered to the acceptance of a clergy oscillating between old and new beliefs, and by a reference to the disputes of the Caroline period, when the literal and grammatical sense was maintained by the king and the bishops, and denounced by the Puritans as Jesuitical and Arminian.

Such, so far as I am able to ascertain it, is Bishop Forbes's theory; and yet, as I have intimated already, I am not sure that I have exhibited it rightly. Perhaps he is not altogether consistent with himself in what he says about his own canon of interpretation. He claims to be bound by the literal sense of the Articles; yet he seems to admit that those whose historical position he defends as the true one, the Catholic party in the Elizabethan age of the Church, imported into them preconceived notions foreign to their letter, just as he says is now done by Low Churchmen. So there is something not easily explicable in his comment on the Royal Declaration. The Caroline bishops knew very well what they were doing; so did the Puritans. No wonder that these latter sought to stigma

1 Vol. ii. p. 805.

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2 The object of lawyers, according to the principle of acquitting one criminated if possible, is to evacuate the meaning of terms whereby the Church has defined and guarded the faith.'-Vol. ii. p. 766.

• Vol. i. p. xxi.

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