RITUALISM AND COMPREHENSION, ere THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR,")
you allow me, as one of those who have signed the -counter-address to the Primate, to offer a few remarks on the article respecting us which appeared iu your last week's issue P 1. We are, by implication at least, accused of intolerance, But of what are we intolerant P Not, certainly, of mere diversity of ritual. I am not myself what is called an Evangelical, but I am sure that the narrowest Evangelical amongst us would admit that the law of the Church of England, as it is, allows of very considerable licence iu this respect. It is permissible to have musical, ornate, insthetic, nay, even sensational services, without violating the letter of that law. Whether we like them or not ourselves, I do not fancy that any of us wish to prohibit choral services, surpliced choirs, hymns processional and retro- cessional, and many other things that are supposed to make Ritualistic churches attractive and popular. What we are not prepared to tolerate is simply what, from the time of her Reformation till very recent times, the Church of Eng- land herself has not appeared to tolerate—the Romish Mass, and its surroundings, and all more or less exact imitatious of it. We believe—it may be, iu out' ignorance and simplicity—that this toleration is involved in the toleration now asked for on behalf of the Ritualists, we are persuaded that such tolera- tion would be destructive of what may be called the Protestant element in the Church, and we must be excused for declining to make the position tenable for the Ritualists, at the cost of making it untenable for ourselves.
2. We are put in the same category with the Ritualists, as
alike breakers of the law, only there is this differeuce,—the Ritualist, when he breaks the law, means something by it, and that, you seem to imply, is a point in his favour ; we break it out of pure lightness of heart, and therefore, apparently, have the greater sin. It is true that in many rubrical details we all offend, but the offences of Low Churchmen, apart from their being less significant, differ from those of Ritualists in two respects : —(a.) In our violation or neglect of prescribed ritual, we are but doing, for the most part, what our predecessors for a hundred years have done before us. The delinquencies are a tradition or an inheritance from past generations of the clergy. In the ease of the Ritualists, the innovations are new, without pre- cedent, in the teeth of prescription and long usage. On the whole, we are better, rather than worse, than our fathers. As for the Evangelicals, properly so called, they are assuredly more observant of Church order than the first founders of that school from whom they are supposed, in some other respects, so greatly to have degenerated. (b.) Again, though we may have to plead guilty to a general consciousness that in the matter of rubric and ritual we do some things that we ought not, and leave undone some thins that we should do ; yet we have never refused to obey the man- date of authority, or defied the law, when it has been brought to bear on us individually and personally. Let the same pressure be put on us as has in certain cases been applied to the Ritualists, and then it will be seen whether we will obey or resist. For example, you refer to the wearing of the cope. I am a member of a Cathedral Chapter, and I have never refused to wear a cope, for I have never been bidden to do so. When- ever the mandate reaches me, I believe I shall be found quite amenable to it.
3. But the strong point of your case is that unless the
Ritualists are allowed to have their own way, the Establish- ment is in danger ; and you appeal from the Zealots, who have some antiquated notions of the connection between a Christian Church and Christian dogma, to the Gallios, who care nothing whether doctrine be Scriptural or un-Scriptural, but would main- tain an Establishment for reasons entirely independent of that question. What kind of a Church can exist and flourish, for good or evil, through the action of the zealots, the records of the past—the story of Paul and Augustine and Luther, and the Puritans of the seventeenth century and the Wesleyans of the eighteenth—can sufficiently show ; but what the nature and properties will be of a Church maintained under the auspices of the Gallio, we can only imperfectly conjecture.
But if your appeal to the 0-allies should prove effective, is it certain that your object will be attained P If the G allies so vigorously exert themselves that the practices and principles of the Ritualists are legalised, will the Establishment, therefore, be safe P Is it not possible that in putting out the fire in one corner of the old building, the Gallios will be kindling it in another P It may turn out that a Ritualist exodus can only be
prevented at the cost of an Evangelical secession. Whether it
is worth preventing at such a cost is, of course, a matter of opinion, but, at all events, the issue will probably he Disestab- lishment. And it is possible that the 0-allies, when appealed to, may say that that is the best remedy for the present dis- tress. They are probably wearied of the feuds of Capulets and Montagues, and disposed to cry cut, with noble impartiality, "A plague on both your houses !"—I am, Sir, &a., Henn G. ROBINSON, Prebendary of York.
[" We must be excused for declining to make the position tenable for the Ritualists at the cost of making it untenable for ourselves." That seems to us,—if we interpret what it means aright, that Ritualists in one place are so intolerable to non- Ritualists in another, that the latter cannot worship peace- ably iu their way, so long as the former are permitted to worship peaceably in theirs,—of the very essence of intolerance. Mr. Robinson forgets that we are not pleading for Ritualists
as priests imposing an unwelcome ritual on their congrega- tions,—quite the reverse,—but for congregations asking leave to adhere to a ritual they approve and are accustomed to, as against either Ritualist or non-Ritualist innovations. How is Mr. Robinson the worse off at York, that the people of St. Alban's worship as they wish in London p—En. Spectator.]
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