27 AUGUST 1870, Page 3

A long and somewhat tedious controversy has been going on,

which has only come to a conclusion this week, on the right of certain Dissenting members of the Committee formed for the revision of the English translation of the Scriptures, to join in a communion-service held in Westminster Abbey as a sort of devotional introduction to the work. Some of the clergymen of the Church were greatly scandalized at the inclusion of a Uni- tarian minister among them, and wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury to complain,—their ground being that the Communion Service is only meant for those who have passed through con- firmation, which would furnish, for that time at least, a guarantee of orthodoxy. They also refer to the recital of the Nicene Creed in the Communion Service, and think it very shocking that a Unitarian minister should have either wished or been allowed to join in it. The Archbishop's reply was a rather cautious docu- ment, asserting, however, that in his opinion no clergyman could legally decline to give the communion to an applicant except on the grounds of scandalous life indicated in the rubric, but at the same time intimating that the Unitarian minister in question, the Rev. G. VanceSmith, had committed an error of judgment in joining a service so clearly penetrated by Nicene doctrine. If the Arch- bishop is right in his ecclesiastical law, we do not see what ques- tion there is to discuss beyond this very speculative one,—what amount of intellectual divergence from the assumptions of any form of worship ought to incapacitate one morally for taking part in it? That is a question which every man will decide differently for himself. But if there be, on the one hand, no public suppression of a man's own views of truth, and on the other hand, a real sense on his part of spiritual advantage from joining in the service,—we cannot conceive how he is to be blamed. No Pro- testant probably ever yet joined in a religious service in all the intellectual assumptions of which, if he had carefully examined them, he would have fully agreed. And the question of how much or little intellectual divergence the devotional feeling can bear, is strictly one for the individual feeling alone.