Furthermore, despite the fearful warnings of
Scripture against such practices, and the terrible opportunities they gave to
the devil, Moule also claimed to communicate with the dead and offered prayer
for them, in a manner reminiscent of the interactions with the dead of the
spiritualist Higher Life pillars Mr. and Mrs. Mount-Temple. Moule also commended such frightfully
unscriptural practices to others. It was
his “sweet solace” to offer “[p]erpetual greetings to” his “beloved ones” who
had “gone” to the grave. He stated: “I daily and by name greet my own
beloved child, my dearest parents, and others precious to me,” although they
were already dead. Prayers for the dead
were “no sin;” rather, communication
with and prayers for the dead were a “sweet and blessed help” in the spiritual
life (pgs. 220-221, Veni Creator: Thoughts on the Person and Work of the Holy Spirit of Promise, by H. C. G. Moule. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1890; cf. repr. ed., Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 1977), so Moule himself engaged daily in such spiritualistic
exercises. Moule stated: “I cannot think . . . that warrant for such
prayer is a fact of revelation,” but although no support whatever for prayers
for the dead appeared in Scripture, he stated:
“I for one cannot condemn such exercises of the soul,” and he both
practiced such himself and accepted such communications as a legitimate
“devotional” practice of other “Christians who so pray.” He even commended a “beautiful . . . prayer”
for the dead for the use of Christians, which included not only intercession
for the dead but a wish for communication with the dead person: “[I]f there be ways in which [he] may come. .
. grant me a sense of [his] presence” (pgs. 96-98, Christus Consolator, Moule).
Such interaction with the dead—who, Moule averred, really came back, as
such communications certainly were not simply the work of deceiving
demons—contributed to the bishop’s belief in the continuation of spiritual
gifts and his opposition to cessationism.
As a
result of such fellowship with and prayers for the dead, Moule believed that
“the Lord grants what can only be called visions,” so that the dead return and
grant an even greater level of communication with the living than can be
obtained by invisible communication with the afterlife. Moule himself had received supernatural and
“deeply sweet dreams,” where dead people he communicated with and prayed for
appeared to him and looked on him “with an extraordinary look of bliss” (pgs.
220-221, Handley Carr Glyn Moule, Bishop
of Durham: A Biography, John B.
Harford & Frederick C. Macdonald).
Moule likewise commended others who had “veritable vision[s] of God”
coming to them and telling them things; furthermore, he encouraged and
supported those who received such visions to trust in their veracity (pg.
287). In light of his continuationism,
Moule’s sympathy for the leader of early British Pentecostalism, Alexander
Boddy, is unsurprising (pgs. 23-24, 88, The
Pentecostal Movement, Donald Gee).
Furthermore, Moule also had the
ability as a Anglican Bishop to convey special powers through the laying on of
his hands. One who received such power
from Moule testified: “At my interview,
he laid his hands on my head, and gave me his solemn blessing for the work. I
distinctly felt that it was something very real. This was not a matter of
faith, but a distinct physical experience, as definite as an electrical shock.
It was not like an electric shock, but something both spiritual and physical
which I cannot properly describe. . . . It had results, for both in my parish,
and where I was Bishop’s Messenger, the Mission was much more successful than
it usually was” (pgs. 222-223).
Moule
was also ecumenical, warmly accepting as brothers in Christ High Anglican and
Romanizing Anglican baptismal regenerationists and other heretics within his
denomination, instead of seeking to purge such false teachers out. “His breadth
of view gained for him in a marked degree the confidence of all schools of thought,”
and his “genial tolerance” of non-evangelicals brought him the “war[m]
prais[e]” of the “High Anglicans” (pgs. 186-187; cf. Luke 6:26). It probably helped that Moule could make
“strongly worded sacramental statement[s]” about “the Lord as present on the
Table” in the sacrament of Communion (pg. 95, Transforming Keswick: The
Keswick Convention, Past, Present, and Future, Price & Randall). The
Roman Catholic sacrament of Confirmation could bring one into the Anglican
communion, Moule held—even if the Anglican “Canons might say otherwise.” “[P]ublic renunciation” of Rome and her
heresies should be “waive[d]” for entrance into Anglicanism (pg. 215). Incense could be used in association with the
sacrament of Holy Communion (pg. 218-219).
Moule permitted those under his authority to practice the “Reservation
of the Blessed Sacrament” as an act of “real helpfulness” in certain situations
in worship, although it was a practice involving the worship of the communion
bread in Roman Catholicism (pg. 220). Sharing
wine and meals with his fellow clergy (pg. 201), Moule became “most devoted and
loving friends” with “the leading Ritualist in the North of England,” whom
Moule regarded as a “Christian man and
minister wholly devoted to his Lord” and to whom Moule “took special delight”
in providing ecclesiastical advancement (pg. 194). Moule “quite recognized that those who held
the Catholic standpoint had a perfect right to be included in the Anglican
Church. And his letters breathe the spirit of kindly sympathy with this point
of view. He desired that ‘all essential requirements of the High Anglicans
should be met’” (pg. 196), and, as a Bishop, he “rejoice[d]” to put “important
. . . living[s]” with “most important point[s] of vantage” into the hands of
those with “extreme opposite” views to his generally evangelical Anglicanism
(pg. 195). Thus, he happily worked as an
Anglican Bishop not to purge, but to promote those under his charge who led
countless precious souls into false ritualistic gospels and the fires of an
eternal hell. Moule was so far from
seeking to remove those who believed a false gospel that “he would have erred
in favour to High Churchmen lest he should even appear to be unkind” (pgs.
196-197). He wrote:
It has been my happiness, not
least in my later years, to know and to love, as friends in Christ, holy men of
other types and schools, and to see with reverence their Lord’s likeness in the
countenance of their lives. . . . These men are beyond shadow of question at
least as much Christ’s own as I dare to think myself. From their example, from their words,
sometimes from words definitely shaped by their distinctive tenets, I have
often received exhortation and edification. (pg. 197)
That is, Moule thought both rationalist Higher
Critics and Romanist Anglicans were as much Christians as himself, and he often
received exhortation and edification from their distinctive tenets, although
these were damnable heresies. To Moule,
in his appointments of ministers to lead the people of God, “the question of
views was secondary” (pg. 203); “nor was he a good judge of character” (pg.
211; contrast 1 Timothy 3). In his
bishopric he brought about “entire freedom . . . from ritual trouble and
partisan division” (pg. 200), although the gospel itself had to be jettisoned
to do so. Thus, Moule was “scrupulous”
to treat well “High Churchmen in [his] Diocese[.] It fell to his lot to appoint
incumbents to many parishes where the teaching and practice were not in accord
with his personal convictions, but he was always at pains to secure the
continuity of the tradition of such churches” (pg. 203). That is, when a false gospel was being
preached by a minister of Satan in a parish overseen by Moule, the Bishop was
very diligent to make sure that the true gospel was not brought in; but upon
the retirement of one minister of Satan, Moule consecrated another servant and
preacher of Antichrist. While the
Bible affirms that believers must “earnestly contend for the faith” (Jude 3),
and although the Anglican denomination descended ever further into rationalism
and Romanism as Moule grew older, he nonetheless wrote: “As
life advances, I feel less and less the value of controversy, where spiritual
matters are concerned” (pg. 215).
In light of his willingness to
praise and commend ritualism, it is not surprising that Moule could write: “Only it is right that I should say for my
own part that not one word . . . has
been written [by me] in forgetfulness of my obligations as a presbyter of the
English Church, or with faltering convictions as to the rightness of the
language of its sacramental ritual” (pg. 80, Veni Creator). Moule thus
endorsed the language employed in, for example, the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, in “The Ministration of Publick Baptism of
Infants, to be Used in the Church,” which requires the priest to pray:
By the Baptism of thy well-beloved Son Jesus Christ,
in the river Jordan, [Thou, God] didst sanctify Water to the mystical washing
away of sin. . . . We call upon thee for this Infant, that he, coming to thy
holy Baptism, may receive remission of his sins by spiritual regeneration.
Receive him, O Lord, as thou hast promised . . . that this Infant may enjoy the
everlasting benediction of thy heavenly washing, and may come to the eternal
kingdom which thou hast promised by Christ our Lord. Amen.
The
form for “The Ministration of Private Baptism of Children” requires the priest
to act as follows:
[P]our Water upon [the infant], saying these words; “I
baptize thee in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
Amen.” Then, all kneeling down, the Minister shall give thanks unto God, and
say, “We yield thee hearty thanks, most merciful Father, that it hath pleased
thee to regenerate this Infant with thy Holy Spirit, to receive him for thine
own Child by adoption, and to incorporate him into thy holy Church. And we
humbly beseech thee to grant, that as he is now made partaker of the death of
thy Son, so he may be also of his resurrection; and that finally, with the
residue of thy Saints, he may inherit thine everlasting kingdom; through the
same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
The
Ministration further commends the “baptizing of [a] Child; who being born in
original sin, and in the wrath of God, is now, by the laver of Regeneration in
Baptism, received into the number of the children of God, and heirs of
everlasting life.” The binding Anglican
Confession of Faith, the 39 Articles,
affirms that as “by an instrument, they that receive baptism rightly are
grafted into the Church; [and] the promises of the forgiveness of sin, and of
our adoption to be the sons of God, by the Holy Ghost are visibly signed and
sealed” (Article XXVII). While one can be glad that Moule personally denied
baptismal regeneration and strove, albeit with questionable efficacy, to make
the sacramental language of his denomination cohere with more evangelical views
(cf. pgs. 259ff., Outlines of Christian
Doctrine, H. C. G. Moule.
London: Hodder & Stoughton,
1890), he nonetheless swore commitment to the Anglican documents that actually
did teach sacramental salvation, and he had good “Christian” fellowship with
the multitude of his fellow Anglican ministers and members that took more
seriously than he the language of Anglican creed and ritual and consequently
affirmed baptismal regeneration.
Moule personally accepted grave
errors, from weak views on the inspiration of Scripture, continuationism, and
ecumenicalism, to prayers for the dead.
He also had a terrible lack of discernment about heresy. It is consequently not surprising that
unregenerate false teachers such as Hannah W. Smith and Robert P. Smith were
accepted as Christian brethren by Moule, and their Keswick theology adopted and
promulgated by him.
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