THE MILES PLATTING CASE.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.']
Sfa,—Yon are unjust to the Bishop of Manchester, and your injustice is all the harder to bear, because you attack him on a point on which a man of his high spirit cannot well defend him- self. For the present difficulty at Miles Platting mainly arises from the Bishop's past forbearance. When Mr. Green was sent to Lancaster Jail, the Bishop might have dismissed Mr. Cowgill, the unlicensed curate, and placed the parish in the charge of a curate, with instructions to lower the ritual to what Dr. Fraser holds to be the legal standard. It would have been the course usually taken by Bishops. Most people would have thought it his duty. The diocese would have acquiesced. The probable result would have been the dispersion of the main part of Mr. Green's congregation, and the ending of much of Mr. Green's work. But other Bishops to whom the charge of a Ritualist church has fallen have sacrificed the congregation and the work, without scruple ; and in so doing, they acted prudently, from their point of view, and avoided future difficulty. The Bishop of London, whom you hold up to the Bishop of Manchester as a bright example of fatherly consideration, has dispersed con- gregation after congregation. But Dr. Fraser is a different man. His allowance of the ritual which he condemned, for the sake of the Miles Platting congregation and of Mr. Green himself, marks his 'chivalrous nature, and in judging him, is the most important factor in forming a judgment. No one counselled him, and no one praised him. Practical men called his conduct weak. High Churchmen had no gratitude for the Bishop who had sent Mr. Green before Lord Penzance, and the Church Association, which now does all it can to damage him by its self-interested approval, attacked him bitterly. But a man's character is marked, not by what he does under legal advice, but by his action in matters which, in his mind, rise above the sphere of law. The Bishop is probably wrong in thinking a chimere and a cope are the same vestment, or that a rubric of the Prayer-book can be abolished by the Privy Council ; but he spared Mr. Green's work, when interest and "the law" and popular opinion combined to urge him to crush it, and he is a greater man than you give him credit for. He objects to Mr. Cowgill's nomination, and he has a fair right to object. If eighteen months ago the ritual of Miles Platting had been altered and the congregation broken up, a new congrega- tion would have been formed, which, however small it might have been, would be strong enough, backed by the Church Asso- ciation, to make it impossible for Mr. Cowgill or any one else to reintroduce the vestments. It is only the Bishop's forbearance which makes the continuance of the high ritual possible. But of that forbearance, Sir Percival Heywood makes an ungener- ous use. He has a perfect right to present a Ritualist. But as far as I am aware, the Bishop has never said that he will reject any man who does not give him a guarantee to reduce the ritual. If the Bishop took this position, then your contention that he is breaking the Archbishop's truce might be valid. But all we have in evidence is that the Bishop objects to Mr. Cowgill—that is, Sir Percival Heywood nominates the one man who is identified with the disputed ritual in the parish, whose position is due to no other cause than the kindly tolerance of the Bishop in time past, whose nomination is a distinct challenge, and whose institution would be a distinct humiliation. I am as high a Churchman as Sir Percival, and am often sore vexed and grieved by the Bishop's fulminations about "the law ;" but here the layman is surely wrong, and the Bishop right. Very probably Sir Percival s nomination is legally valid, and the Bishop will find that he is setting himself up above "the law." But however illegal the Bishop's objections may be, he is quite justified in saying, "You are taking an unworthy advantage of my forbearance, and you would not have had the opportunity of forcing upon me a man who has for two years carried on in my diocese illegal ritual, if it had not been that my idea of the generosity which a Christian gentleman should show is different from yours."—I am, Sir, [Our correspondent is a reasonable man, but he is not very strong in his facts. In the first place, we know of no case in which the Bishop of London has dispersed a Ritualistic con- gregation in the manner suggested. Mr. Lowder's congregation was left in charge of its curates during the vacancy, and an old Ritualist was instituted by the Bishop to succeed Mr. Lowder without remonstrance. The Bishop of London instituted, with- out demur, to All Saints', Margaret Street, to St. Paul's. Knightsbridge, to St. Barnabas', Pimlico, and to St. Mary Magdalene's, Munster Square, men who were known to intend carrying on the ritual as it was before. Can our correspondent produce a single case in which Dr. Jackson has dispersed a Ritualist congregation, by insisting on entrusting it to the care of anti-Ritualist curates? In the next place, the Bishop of Man- chester did supersede Mr. Cowgill after the living was declared vacant, and some weeks before the patron had nominated Mr. Cowgill. Again, we deny that it was a moderate and "chivalrous" policy to leave the congregation in charge of its Ritualist curate, if the Bishop intended to scatter the congregation directly the living fell vacant. Lastly, we have great doubts whether the patron could easily have found another incumbent for so poorly paid and unhealthy a parish as Miles Platting is understood to be, who would have been competent to carry on the good work which Mr. Green is admitted to have done. Indeed, though we have no special knowledge on the point, we have little doubt that the extraordinary difficulty of finding a suitable nominee for such a parish was the patron's chief reason for offering the living to Mr. Cowgill.—En. Spectator.]
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