Dr. Samuel Horsley, Bishop of St. Asaph, who died in 1806, says in a charge:

He who thinks of God's ministers, as the meer servants of the State, is out of the Church,-severed from it by a kind of self excommunication.1

Dr. Charles Daubeny, Archdeacon of Salisbury, was born in 1745, and he was a writer well received in his day and his works went through several editions. He insists that the constitution of the Church of England is apostolical.

"As my Father has sent me," said Christ, "so send I you;" &c. According to the common import of which words, as well as the received sense of them in the Catholic church, our Saviour is to be understood as if he had said, "With the same power and authority that my Father sent me into the world to constitute and govern my church, I send you and your successors for the further advancement of the same divine purpose.2

1 Samuel Horsley, Charge . . . in the year 1790, Gloucester, Robson, 1791, p. 36. 2 Charles Daubeny, A Guide to the Church, sec. ed. London, Rivington, 1804, vol. i. p. 21, Discourse II. There is a life of the Archdeacon in the third edition, 1830.

CHAPTER XIV.

ATTEMPTS AT A BETTER UNDERSTANDING WITH SOME CONTINENTAL CHRISTIANS.

IT has been said of late, with an air of authority, that it was the Oxford Movement that was the only source of the present endeavours to effect a reunion of Christians. But if this means that no attempts at reunion were made before 1833 the statement is the contrary of the fact. Attempts to bring Christians more together were going on throughout the period between the Restoration and the rise of the Oxford Movement. Before the Restoration, when the prospects of the Church of England seemed at their lowest, Dr. Bramhall, afterwards to be Archbishop of Armagh, expressed himself thus:

If I have had any byasse, it hath been desire of peace which our common Saviour left as a Legacy to his Church, that I might live to see the reunion of Christendome, for which I shall alwaies bow the knees of my heart to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.1

About 1670, and again later in 1688, and 1707, a miscellaneous writer, Philip Ayres, thought it would be useful to translate and print a tract written by some Frenchman in the hope of reuniting all Christians in one Communion. The Frenchman's name does not appear, and his theological standpoint is not clear. The title is:

Pax Redux, or the Christian Reconciler. In Three Parts. Being A Project for Re-uniting all Christians into one sole Communion . . . Done out of French into English, by Philip Ayres, Esq; Published by Authority. London, Printed, and Sold, by Andrew Sowle, at the Three Keys in NagsHead Court, in Grace-Church Street over-against the Conduit, 1688, 4°.

Of the third edition Hearne says:

lately a 3d Impression is come out with great Alterations from Mr. Ayres's, and without any acknowledgment (as Mr. Ayres tells me himself) of the former just like the Dutch Rogues who print other Men's things as their own without Acknowledgment.2

1 John Bramhall, A Replication to the Bishop of Chalcedon, London, 1656, To the Christian Reader, signature a 3, verso.

2 Remarks and Collections of Thomas Hearne, ed. by C. E. Doble, Oxford Historical Society, 1886, vol. ii. p. 78.

If it were thought worth while by the booksellers to bring out a pirated edition of a tract, which, it must be said, had no very distinct suggestions to make, it seems very likely that there was sufficient popular interest in schemes of reunion for the man of business to take the risks of reprinting even after two editions had already been issued.

During the melancholy decade which preceded the Restoration, Isaac Basire, driven from home by Parliament, does his best to create a good feeling among the Greeks for the ruined Church of England. He was afterwards in Westminster Abbey to set forth that the Church of England was for purity of doctrine, substance, decency, and beauty, the most perfect under Heaven; that England was the very land of Goshen.1

He writes in 1653:

At Jerusalem I received much honor, both from the Greeks and Latins. The Greek patriarch (the better to express his desire of communion with our old Church of England by mee declared unto him) gave mee his bull or patriarchal seal in a blanke (which is their way of credence) besides many other respects. As for the Latins, they received me most courteously into their own convent, though I did openly profess myself a priest of the Church of England. After some velitations about the validity of our ordination, they procured mee entrance into the Temple of the Sepulchre, at the rate of a priest, that is half in half less than the lay-men's rate; and at my departure from Jerusalem the pope's own vicar (called Commissarius Apostolicus Generalis) gave me his diploma in parchment under his own hand and publick seal, in it stiling mee Sacerdotem Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ and S.S. Theologiæ Doctorem; at which title many marvelled, especially the French Ambassador here. [Pera].

Meanwhile, as I have not been unmindful of our Church, with the true patriarch here, whose usurper now for a while doth interpose, so will I not be wanting to embrace all opportunities of propagating the doctrine and repute thereof, stylo veteri; especially if I should about it receive any commands or instructions from the King, [Charles II.] (whom God save) only in ordine ad Ecclesiastica do I speak this; as for instance, proposall of communion with the Greek Church (salvâ conscientiâ et honore) a church very considerable in all those parts. And to such a communion, together with a convenient reformation of some grosser errours, it hath been my constant design to dispose and incline them.

In the early part of the letter he speaks of his "success there,

1 Diary of John Evelyn, November 2, 1661, ed. Bray and Wheatley, London, 1879, vol. ii. p. 138.

[Zante] in spreading amongst the Greeks the Catholic doctrine of our Church ".1

In 1662, Dr. Basire showed Evelyn

the syngraphs and original subscriptions of divers eastern patriarchs and Asian churches to our confession.2

In 1670, Dr. John Covel was Chaplain to the English Embassy at Constantinople, and he tells us that he was importuned by Dr. Sancroft, Dr. Gunning, and Dr. Pearson, with others, to inquire what was the generally accepted belief of the Greeks touching Transubstantiation, contradictory reports having reached London.3 His successor, Edward Browne, appears also to have made some attempts to understand the affairs of the Greek Church. This curiosity may have been occasioned by the visit of Papas Jeremias Germanus who was in England before 1669 according to Dr. Thomas Smith, and also in Oxford, "where he met with considerable relief"." Another, and apparently a longer visitor, was Joseph Georgirenes, Metropolitan of Samos, for whom a Greek Church was built about the year 1677 in London in the Soho quarter. Over the door there was an inscription recording its setting up in the reign of King Charles the Second, while Dr. Henry Compton was Bishop of London. The cost was borne by the King, the Duke of York, the Bishop of London, and other bishops and nobles. The

1 The correspondence of Isaac Basire . . . with a memoir of his life by W. N. Darnell, London, Murray, 1831, p. 115. This letter is written from "Pera near Constantinople, 20 Julii 1653 ". He superscribes his letters with I. H. S. or else with Iesu. In the appendix, p. 331, is the permit from the Latins calling him Sacerdotem Ecclesiae Anglicanæ, SS. Theol. Doctorem ".

66

2 The Diary of John Evelyn, October 29, 1662, ed. by Bray and Wheatley, London, 1879, vol. ii. p. 153.

p. i.

3 John Covel, Some account of the present Greek Church, Cambridge, 1722, Preface,

4 Cambridge University Library, Baumgartner Papers, vol. i. pt. 1. No. 90, quoted by Geo. Williams, Orthodox Church of the East, Rivingtons, 1868, p. xv.

P. 46.

5 Tho. Smith, An Account of the Greek Church, London, Flesher and Davis, 1680,

"See the Greek inscription in the Ecclesiologist, 1850, vol. xi. p. 120. There is a translation of it in George Williams, The Orthodox Church of the East in the Eighteenth Century, Rivingtons, 1868, p. lxvi. of the Appendix to the Introduction.

7 There would seem to have been a general letter from some authority, suggesting collections for this Greek church, directed to English parishes. In 1678, Feb. 28th, we find : "Given the Bp. of Samos toward building a church for the Greek-Xtians in Westminster ten shillings". (Harry Gill and Everard L. Guilford, The Rector's Book Clayworth, Notts, Nottingham, Saxton, 1910, p. 39.) Far off in Somerset at the same time they "Paid towards the building of a church in London for the Grecians that came into England" one shilling. (F. Hancock, Dunster Church and Priory, Taunton, Barnicott and Pearce, 1905, p. 172.) The Metropolitan visited Oxford in July, 1677, to

Greeks do not seem to have kept it long; and after some changes of ownership it was consecrated for Anglican worship in the middle of the nineteenth century under the title of St. Mary the Virgin. It was taken down as unsafe at the end of that century, and a new building was set up on the site.1

The Bishop of London, Dr. Henry Compton, seems to have been a moving spirit in this business, as well as in the establishment of a Greek College at Oxford, to be spoken of hereafter; for Dr. Thomas Smith in his Epistle Dedicatory to Dr. Compton of the English edition of his book on the Greek Church, speaks thus:

How highly your Lordship has merited of the Greek Church by taking it into your care, and by opening a Sanctuary for the poor distressed Bishops and Priests of that Communion to fly unto, is not unknown at Constantinople: and whatever the success of it may be, They cannot be so unjust, as not to applaud your Lordships design.

It cannot be doubted in the least, that the most likely way to effect this excellent design, was not onely to permit but to encourage the building of a Church in London for their Nation; where they might enjoy the free exercise of their Worship in all things that are decent and inoffensive, and any way essential to their Religion. That this has been done with such Christian generosity and prudence, they owe, next to His Majesty unto your Lordship whom they must for ever look upon as their great Patron.

Thus only three years after the building of the Greek Church in London there is a fear expressed in the sentence, "whatever the success of it may be," that the undertaking was doomed to be of no long continuance. The same ill-success befel the project of bringing over young Greeks to give them an Oxford education. The scheme endowed by Mr. Cecil Rhodes was here anticipated by more than two hundred years; though what are called the sinews of war appear in this case to have been lacking.

The project was in existence as early as July or Easter 1677, when Anthony Wood reports:

At that time there was a great talk of converting Gloucester Hall into a College for the educating 20 or 30 Greeks in Academical learning and to send them home, but these only wanted pelf.2

collect money. (Life and Times of Anthony Wood, ed. Andrew Clark, Oxford Historical Society, 1892, vol. ii. p. 379.)

1 Anthony Wood reports two Greek clergymen in Oxford, one said to be an Abbot, the other a Bishop. The former comes in May, 1685, the latter in August. Wood does not give the name or title of either. (Ibid. 1894, vol. iii. pp. 143 and 156.)

2 Ibid. 1892, vol. ii. p. 379.