Mr. Walter Phillimore, the chancellor of the diocese of Lincoln,
has decided that it is right and legal to refuse to permit- an inscription in any churchyard which describes a Dissenting minister as "the Reverend," more especially if the Dissenting minister in question be a Wesleyan. This decision will be ap- pealed against, and the Court of Arches will have to decide the point. Mr. Phillimore antimated that the trial appeared to be an "endeavour to obtain the authoritative sanction by the Church". of the Dissenters' right to the title of "Reverend." Well, if so, what a silly business the resistance has been ! If no ob- jection had been made, the description of a deceased Wesleyan minister as "the Reverend" would have had no more significance than the admission of the various eccentric epitaphs which we find in churchyards,—which nobody ever supposed to be of a nature to commit the Church to the strange doctrines they often con- tain. It is the Bishop of Lincoln's foolish opposition to a courtesy title which the world in general allows, that alone gives even the semblance of importance to this childish struggle.
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