The Lower House of Convocation appears to have passed the
fol- lowing addition to the Burial Service. In the new proposed rubric it is provided, " If the person to be buried, having been baptised, have died in the actual commission of some open and notorious sin, it shall be lawful for the minister, when they come to the grave, to read only the 36th Psalm, a lesson taken from St. Matthew xxiv., 35-43, and the four sentences appointed to be said while the corpse is made ready to be laid into the earth, conclud- ing with the words, ' Lord have mercy,' &c., the Lord's Prayer, and ' The grace of,' &c., at the end of the Office." To this utterly illiberal rubric, which denies even the hope of salvation to the sinner, Canon Seymour proposed to add after the words " open and notorious sin," " have, by his unchristian life, given great scandal to the Church," so as to enable any hot- brained parson to refuse to bury a Unitarian. There was fierce debate, but at last calmer counsels prevailed, and Dr. Tyndall may be buried in hope of his repentance by fifteen to thirteen. The new rule, simple as it seems, would have brought the Church down in ten years.
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