Footnote #14
Defense of this view
If to any one this view of the Christian Church should seem to require further explanation, I cannot do better than refer him to the book from which in great measure I have learned all that I have been trying to convey,---Professor Seeley's ``Ecce Homo''. Two points in Professor Seeley's view of the Church are of especial importance in the present connection: (1) that theological agreement is not of its essence; (2) that personal attachment to Christ is the one essential of membership. This attachment must undoubtedly imply a certain view of Christ's person and authority, which naturally must express itself in some sort of ``doctrine''. This is the point usually ignored by those who wish to broaden the Church into an ``undenominational'' branch of the civil service. That the form in which the individual and the society express their sense of the unique significance of Christ's life and work is a matter of secondary importance,---this is the truth which is commonly overlooked by those who insist on rigid intellectual agreement with every clause of ancient definitions. I cannot at this moment find the passage in which Seeley compares those who refuse to enter the Church's ministry on account of exaggerated scruples about subscription, to citizens who should refuse to take civil office under a constitution to which they were heart and soul attached, because they could not bring themselves to make some formal declaration about its historical origin which criticism had disproved. I wonder whether Professor Sidgwick would refuse a civil oath whose terms seemed to treat the social contract as an historical fact.