H. E. Manning’s ideas on the church as an Anglican

Abstract

Manning's Anglican career was essentially a time of transition in which he transferred his allegiance from the Evangelical to the High Church wing of the Church of England. This transition was the result of his working out of certain principles that all his life he was to hold very dear. His fundamental concern was with the unity and authority of the Church. Like the early Tract writers he based this authority on the Apostolic Succession of the ministry and this led him to study tradition and its part in the rule of faith. His view of tradition as the interpreter of the Scriptures marks his break with, the Evangelical party in the Church. This view of the role of tradition, in turn, gave way to the idea of the infallibility of the Church, guaranteed by the perpetual presence of the Holy Spirit. Closely linked with the idea of the authority of the Church was Manning's idea of the unity of the Church. This reached its fullest expression in his book on the subject in which he defended the Church of England as a branch of the true Church. This view he was later to repudiate when he became convinced that the Church of England was in schism. Manning worked out his ideas while leading a public life which exposed him to the full force of the Erastianism of the times. His thinking brought him to the position where he was confronted by what seemed to be the equal claims of the Churches of England and Rome to be the true Church. But events such as the Hampden affair and the Gorham case were to tip the scales and lead him to repudiate the Church of England and join the Church of Rome.