1 JANUARY 1881, Page 16

RITUALISM AND DISESTABLISHMENT.

VOR some little time we have been endeavouring to convince our readers that, if no toleration is to be extended to

.1 Ritualist clergy and Ritualist congregations, the conditions under which the Established Church exists in this country may become very much less secure. Of course, to those who regard an Established Church as an instrument for the propa- gation of a definite body of religious truth, this argument will go for nothing. When Mr. Dunckley argues that the Esta- blished Church being the Nation acting in and upon ecclesi- astical matters, he, as a citizen, is bound to take care that the Nation does not act in a way which he considers wrong and mischievous, there is really no way of answering him. Our contention is only addressed to those who hold that the Established Church is valuable as helping to keep alive a number of doctrines coming near enough to truth to be salutary in their action upon those who accept them, and as exercising in addition a humanising and civilising influence upon large sections of the population. Among those who take this view there will be many who dislike Ritualism, and who, for that reason, will not he disposed to give it a recognised footing within the Established Church, unless they are convinced that the evils likely to follow from suppressing Ritualism are greater than those which wilt follow from permitting it. Clearly, if these evils could by any reasonable possibility include Buds a result as the destruction of the Established Church, this conviction will be attained, and with it the object we have proposed to ourselves in all that we have written on the subject.

It is important from this point of view to estimate the relative force of the considerations for and against the mainten- ance of the existing order of things that are likely to occur to the Ritualists themselves. The form in which the menace to the Established Church will present itself will be either that of an actual disruption, which will greatly encourage its outside enemies ; or of a sustained effort on the part of the Ritualists to escape, by means of Disestablishment, from a position which has become intolerably irksome. It has been urged in Beane quarters that when the Ritualists come to think calmly over their pro- spects after Disestablishment, they will see that there is little or nothing to be gained by provoking such a catastrophe. For one thing, it is said, they will be no better off than they are now as regards the interference of the Temporal Courts. These Courts are just as ready to decide upon a construction of the trust-deed of a particular Baptist chapel or of a Roman Catholic cathedral as they are to interpret the meaning of the Communion Service or of the Ornaments Rubric. In the one case they have to ascertain whether persons teaching such and such doctrines, or practising such and such ceremonies, come within the intentions of the donor ; in the other case, they have to ascertain whether persons teaching such and such doctrines, or practising such and such ceremonies, come within the intentions of the Book of Common Prayer. The action of the Temporal Courts in the two cases is precisely similar. It is hopeless for the Ritualists to hope to escape their all- embracing grasp. They may give up the advantages of an Established Church in order to obtain an imaginary independ- ence, but in so doing they will suffer an irretrievable loss, only to find in the end that they have reaped no compensating gain. It might be a sufficient answer to this plea to say that this all-embracing grasp of the Temporal Courts is rather a rhe- torical figure than a serious reality. As a matter of fact, the occasions on which the internal disputes of non-established re- ligious bodies conic before the Temporal Courts are very few. Consequently, if the theoretical grievance of the Ritualists would not be affected by Disestablishment, their practical griev- ances would be very greatly lessened by it. It is one thing to know that you might conceivably be sent to prison for wearing a particular garment, and another thing to be actually in prison for wearing it. There is, however, a more vital distinction than this between the position of an established Church and the position of a voluntary Church. The members of a voluntary Church are bound, not only by the regulations already made for their government, but by the regulations hereafter to be made by the authority to which they submit. Let us suppose, for example, that the Ornaments Rubric, which exists, or might exist, in the Irish Prayer-book, just as in the English Prayer-book, was interpreted by the Irish Temporal Courts so to make the wearing of vestments obligatory. It is easy to imagine how offensive this decision would be to the great body of the Irish Clergy. They would be prepared to endure any penalty or any loss, rather than be guilty of so glaring an imitation of their Ghostly Enemy. But the intervention of the Law Courts would impose on them neither loss nor penalty. A Synod would be called together with all convenient speed, a new Rubric would be framed to take the place of the Orna- ments Rubric, and it would be made plain to every Irish clergy- man that, so far from wishing him to clothe himself in the tinsel rags of Popery, the Church would give him but a short shrif I if he did. The present complaint of the Ritualists is not that the Temporal Courts interfere to determine which of two conflicting interpretations of a rubric is in the eye of the law the correct one. It is that, in the existing circumstances of the Church of England, the interpretation, when given, is not open to revision, They may be technically wrong in this complaint, indeed, we are of opinion that they are, inasmuch as Convocation sits every year, and there is nothing to prevent it from passing a new Ornaments Rubric, which the Ritualists might accept as superseding in fern conecienti'ae the rubric in the Book of Common Prayer. But, as a matter of fact, Convocation does not and will not do anything of the kind. What would be a perfectly natural subject of debate in the Synod of a Dis- established Church cannot be treated as such in the Synod of an Established Church, without risking the overthrow of the complicated system which has come down to us from the six- teenth century. Consequently, the Ritualist resents the action of the Temporal Courts under the present order of things, in a way which he would be neither bound nor tempted to resent that action if the Church were disestablished. As it is, he feels that the spiritualty is paralysed by the temporaity, After

disestablishment, he would merely feel that the action of the temporalty had disclosed a weak place in the armour of the spiritualty, which it consequently became his dnty to mend.

Just so, it will be said,—indeed, it has been said with more of contumely than is often admitted into its decorous columns, by the Guardian. ' The distinction between an established and a voluntary Church is that one can, while the other cannot, change its own constitution at its own pleasure. What chance would the Ritualists have, in a body which enjoyed this power ? None at all. The first act of the Synod of the Disestablished Church of England would be to pass an Ornaments Rubric which should leave no doubt for the future, whatever there may have been in the past, of the illegality of vestments, of lights, of incense, of all the other adjuncts with which Ritualism has surrounded the service of the Church of England. To agitate for disestablishment would be foolish, in any section of the Clergy ; in the Ritualists, it would be suicidal.' We will not attempt to speculate on the precise amount of truth which belongs to this picture of what would happen after disestablishment. We will concede that it is perfectly accurate, and simply inquire what terrors it has for the Ritualists. Supposing a really representative Synod of the Church of England to be gathered together, and supposing this representative Synod to be as much bent upon putting down Ritualism as Lord Beaconsfield was at that happy moment when, by taking up the Public Worship Regulation Bill, he thought he could read his title clear to Ecclesiastical popu- larity, are the Ritualists likely to be daunted by the prospect ? Not in the least. Their complaint at present is that the Temporal Courts, aided by certain unworthy office-bearers within the Church, are trying to impose unrighteous restraints upon sacramental ceremonial. The reason why this cere- monial is disliked is because, more than anything else, it tends to gain acceptance for the corresponding body of sacramental doctrine, and it is impossible, therefore, for those who hold the doctrine, to surrender the most effectual instrument that has yet been discovered of teaching it. To do so would be disloyal to the Church of England, which, as the Ritualists hold, has retained these doctrines in her Office-books, and provided for their propagation by the Ornaments Rubric. If the Church of England were dis- established, a wholly new consideration would come into

Play. The Church of England wotild then be free to speak her own mind, but whereabouts in the Synod would the Church of England be ? Undoubtedly, in the orthodox section of it, whether that section happened to be a majority or a minority, Athanasius was not deterred, any more than he was convinced, by the circumstance that a majority of the Episco- pate was against him. The only Episcopate whose confidence he cared to enjoy was the Episcopate which agreed with him. Of the rest, he was content to say,—not,We have gone out from them,—but, They have gone out from us. In the same way, the answer of the Ritualists to a hostile majority in the Synod would be a virtual excommunication The larger part, they would say, of the Anglican clergy and of the Angli- can laity have combined to deprive the Church of Eng- land of her Catholic character. They have succeeded in this, as regards themselves, but as regards themselves only. The true Church of England will in future be the Catholic remnant who have refused to have any part or lot in the un- holy work.' What would become of this remnant after it had thus repudiated its unworthy brethren -would probably depend, in a great degree, on its absolute numbers. If these were considerable, there would probably be no difficulty in setting up a rival Episcopal succession. There would simply be two bodies claiming to be the sole theological representa- tive of the Church of England, as it existed before Disestab- lishment. If the minority was a small one, its members would probably drift, one after another, and with a greater or less interval between them, into the Roman Catholic Church. But, except for Dr. Littledale, who hates Rome with truly Irish intensity, even this latter fate would have no terror in Ritualist eyes that are not surpassed by those which are in store for him under the existing system, in the event of this system being worked in the spirit which underlies the Public Worship Regulation Act, and which prompted the conclusion of the majority of the Judicial Committee in the Porches ease and the Ridsdale case. If there be any one who is dis- posed to give no toleration to Ritualists, in the belief that if they are not tolerated they will still from motives of prudence be averse to Disestablishment, he will do well to give the se speculations their due weight.