The Bishop of London, replying to some communicants who complain
that a lay tribunal has suppressed the ritual they approve, and who threaten, therefore, to favour disestablishment, complains that while Judges are never attacked for their judgments in civil cases, they are often abused for their decisions in eccle- siastical causes :—" We are not accustomed, thank God, to impeach the integrity of our Judges in temporal suits, even when their decisions may seriously affect our own interests. May we not, therefore, be led to suspect, when we find ourselves impeaching both their ability and their honesty in dealing with causes ecclesiastical, that our own strong feelings and prepossessions may have somewhat warped our own judgment and perhaps impaired our charity ?" That is sound, but may not strong feelings and prepossessions also warp the minds of Ecclesiastical :Judges ? A J udge in a civil suit has no motive whatever for straining the law, but in an eccle- siastical suit he has. He always at heart wishes to compose differences which threaten the Church. Dr. Jackson will remem- ber that in the last generation, Judges who could be trusted im- plicitly in any other case could not be trusted at all when charging juries upon seditious libels. Their desire to preserve a system that they loved from attacks on paper, constantly impaired both their knowledge of law and their sense of justice. Their charges were not based on law, but on their views of public policy.
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