24 OCTOBER 1868, Page 2

Mr. Purchas, the Ritualist minister of St. James's Chapel, Brighton,

who has been inhibited by his bishop,—the Bishop of Chichester,—from preaching, and who persists in doing so, main- taining that he is in the position of an incumbent, and not amenable to the Church Discipline Act,—has been caricatured in Punch as a boy threatened by his master (the Bishop) with a birch rod made of the Thirty-Nine Articles, and told that he may set the Church on fire if he goes on like this, to which Master Purchas replies, "Just what I would like to do,—there." The Pall Mall says that the likeness is very good, hair and all,—(the hair is plastered puritanically down on Master Purchas's head in a fashion hardly sacerdotal, and certainly not ornamental, or in keeping with the gorgeous chasuble). If so, Master Purchaa does not look like a vessel of grace, or at least like only a very earthen one, of infinitesimally small content. But we are not quite sure that the man has been fairly treated, after all. When a cry against any set is so far the rage as to get into Punch, it is very seldom that Englishmen will be fair. Mr. Purchas asserts that some of the alleged Romanizing practices for which he was inhibited were mere accidents due to a sudden and severe indisposition, and which never happened but once ; and he asked for a personal interview with the Bishop to " explain" his case, which was not granted him. We have no weakness for Ritualism, but the tone of the public towards it is getting rather bullying and brutal.