Newman: Branch Theory and the Demarcation of a National Church

Here then, when you are investigating whither you shall go for your new succession and your new priesthood, I am going to offer you a suggestion which, if it approves itself to you, will do away with the opportunity, or the possibility, of choice altogether. It will reduce the claimants to one. Before entering, then, upon the inquiry, whither you shall betake yourselves, and what you shall be, bear with me while I give you one piece of advice; it is this—While you are looking about for a new Communion, have nothing to do with a "Branch Church." You have had enough experience of branch churches already, and you know very well what they are. Depend upon it, such as is one, such is another. They may differ in accidents certainly; but, after all, a branch is a branch, and no branch is a tree. Depend on it, my brethren, it is not worth while leaving one branch for another. While you are doing so great a work, do it thoroughly; do it once for all; change for the better. Rather than go to another branch, remain where you are; do not put yourselves to trouble for nothing; do not sacrifice this world without gaining the next. Now let us consider this point attentively. {170}

3.

By a Branch Church is meant, I suppose, if we interpret the metaphor, a Church which is separate from its stem; and if we ask what is meant by the stem, I suppose it means the "Universal Church," as you are accustomed to call it. The Catholic Church, indeed, as understood by Catholics, is one kingdom or society, divisible into parts, each of which is in inter-communion with each other and with the whole, as the members of a human body. This Catholic Church, as I suppose you would maintain, has ceased to exist, or at least is in deliquium, for you will not give the name to us, nor do you take it yourselves, and scarcely ever use the phrase at all, except in the Creed; but a "Universal Church" you think there really is, and you mean by it the whole body of professing Christians all over the world, whatever their faith, origin, and traditions, provided they lay claim to an Apostolical Succession, and this whole is divisible into portions or branches, each of them independent of the whole, discordant one with another in doctrine and in ritual, destitute of mutual intercommunion, and more frequently in actual warfare, portion with portion, than in a state of neutrality. Such is pretty nearly what you mean by a Branch, allowing for differences of opinion on the subject; such, for instance, is the Russian Branch, which denounces the Pope as a usurper; such the Papal, which anathematises the Protestantism of the Anglican; {171} such the Anglican, which reprobates the devotions and scorns the rites of the Russian; such the Scotch, which has changed the Eucharistic service of the Anglican; such the American, which has put aside its Athanasian Creed.

Such, I say, is a Branch Church, and, as you will see at once, it is virtually synonymous with a National; for though it may be in fact and at present but one out of many communions in a nation, it is intended, by its very mission, as preacher and evangelist, to spread through the nation; nor has it done its duty till it has so spread, for it must be supposed to have the promise of success as well as the mission. On the other hand, it cannot extravagate beyond the nation, for the very principle of demarcation between Branch and Branch is the distinction of Nation or State; to the Nation, then, or State it is limited, and beyond the Nation's boundaries it cannot properly pass. Thus it is the normal condition of a Branch Church to be a National Church; it tends to nationality as its perfect idea; till it is national it is defective, and when it is national it is all it can be, or was meant to be. Since, then, to understand what any being is, we must contemplate it, not in its rudiments or commencements, any more than in its decline, but in its maturity and its perfection, it follows that, if we would know what a Branch Church is, we must view it as a National Church, and we shall form but an erroneous estimate of its nature and {172} its characteristics, unless we investigate its national form.

Recollect, then, that a Branch Church is a National Church, and the reason why I warn you against getting your orders from such a Church, or joining such a Church, as, for instance, the Greek, the Russian, or some Monophysite Church, is that you are in a National Church already, and that a National Church ever will be and must be what you have found your own to be,—an Erastian body. You are going to start afresh. Well, then, I assert, that if you do not get beyond the idea of Nationalism in this your new beginning, you are just where you were. Erastianism, the fruitful mother of all heresies, will be your first and your last. You will have left Erastianism to take Erastianism up again,—that heresy which is the very badge of Anglicanism, and the abomination of that theological movement from which you spring.

I here assert, then, that a Branch or National Church is necessarily Erastian, and cannot be otherwise, till the nature of man is other than it is; and I shall prove this from the state of the case, and from the course of history, and from the confession, or rather avowal, of its defenders. The English Establishment is nothing extraordinary in this respect; the Russian Church is Erastian, so is the Greek; such was the Nestorian; such would be the Scotch Episcopal, such the Anglo-American, if ever they became commensurate {173} with the nation. And now for my reasons for saying so.