LETTERS TO THE EDITOR,
PERSECUTION AND PROSECUTION.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] Six,—When you say that I am wrong in applying the term " persecution " to the treatment which Mr. Dale is experiencing at the hands of the Church Association, the question between us is probably only a question of definition. By persecution, I understand a process whereby inconvenience or pain is in- flicted, for reasons which, in the judgment of the man who so describes the process, are insufficient. If the reasons for the infliction appear to be adequate, we speak of prosecution or punishment, in order to to avoid the moral censure which the word " persecution " undoubtedly implies. Thus the same act may be characterised as a persecution or prosecution by dif- ferent people, who look at it from opposite points of view. In the judgment of the early Christians, the proceedings of Decius and Diocletian were persecutions. To the Pagans of the day, cultivated and uncultivated, they were simply legal prosecu- tions ; and they were carried out, as we know, with every circum- stance of horror, amidst the general approval of "a law-abiding public."
When, then, I describe the treatment of Mr. Dale as a per- secution, I do not expect the members of the Church Associa tion to agree with me. They are conscientiously persuaded that Mr. Dale is a great criminal ; some of them, perhaps, con, eider him an ecclesiastical monster, to whom a place is already assigned in the Protestant interpretation of the Apocalypse. They shut him up, accordingly, in Holloway Gaol, with quite as good a conscience as had Bonner, when he burnt the Re- formers ; or as Calvin had, when he burnt Servetas ; and it would not be reasonable to expect them to condemn themselves, by agreeing to describe their proceedings as a persecution.
But surely, Sir, it may be otherwise with those who, like yourself, do not by any means agree with Mr. Dale's belief or practice, and yet endeavour to look at things as they are. When you observe that "no one cares whether the decrees of the Privy Council with regard to the conduct of divine service are obeyed or disobeyed," you appear to imply that the'reasons for prosecuting Mr. Dale at all are, in the judgment of in- dependent men endowed with common-sense, wholly insuf- ficient ; and, therefore, that the treatment to which Mr. Dale has been exposed is rea,lly persecution.
You would reply that you do not accept my definition ; that persecution, as you understand it, is " the infliction of suffering on a man for doing what he holds to be right ;" and that Mr. Dale is in prison, not simply for doing certain ceremonial acts, but because he insists on doing them " in a particular building, and as the minister of a particular church." But in Mr. Dale's apprehension—at least, so I presume—this distinction of yours between the act and its surrounding circumstances does not and could not exist. In Mr. Dale's eyes, the act a wearing any vestments can in itself have no sort of value. It is only as a minister of the English Church that Mr. Dale cares to wear these vestments at all. He wears them, no doubt, because he thinks that they express vividly the true doctrine• of the Church of England on the subject of the Holy Communion ; but also because, with the late Lord Chief Baron, he believes that the Rubrical Law of the Church of England, as inter- preted by grammar, logic, and history, although not as inter- preted by the Privy Council Committee, authorises or obliges him to wear them. This is an intellectual conviction, in hold- ing which he may be, conceivably, right or wrong, but from which he is hardly likely to be driven by the coarse logic of imprisonment. Nor can he relieve himself by abandoning his flock or the Church of England, and, as did. Mr. Voysey, "going quietly away." If he thought that the question of belonging to a Church was merely a question of convenience, morally and spiritually on a par with that of belonging to a London club, he might, of course, seek in one Church the per- mission to indulge resthetic tastes which was denied in another. But if his view of the matter is much more serious, involving the duty of ascertaining and obeying the Divine Will, so far as may be; and if, moreover, he believes that his tie to his flock is too sacred to be lightly severed, or severed at all, except for reasons which the Divine Judge may approve ; then he will go on doing that which, mistakenly or not, he believes to be right in his place and capacity of Rector of St. Vedast's ; and, if. he, is imprisoned for doing it, there is no more to be
said. Only those who, like yourself, think the grounds of such a penalty sufficiently frivolous will surely deem him the victim of a persecution.
Thus, again—to take one of the illustrations in your article— the proceedings by which Mr. Voysey was deprived of his bene- fice must at the time have appeared to Mr. Voysey himself in the light of a persecution. As you observe, I should not have so described them, because Mr. Voysey's negative speculations appeared to me to involve nothing less than the whole case of Christianity ; and it is possible that Mr. Voysey himself would agree with me, as in the retrospect he compares his convictions with the creeds and formularies of the Church of England.. Certainly, I never heard that any believing Churchman thought the worse of Mr. Voysey because his theology was condemned by the Judicial Committee, which, by its decision in the case of the " Essays and Reviews," might well have encouraged Mr.. Voysey to express himself as he did, at least on one important point. But does Mr. Voysey's case bear any real analogy to that of a clergyman who believes himself to be obeying the- natural and honest sense of a ceremonial rule of his Church, and the extent of whose error, if he is wrong, is that he wears three or four dresses in public, instead of wearing one or two Mr. Dale's guilt in disobeying the law, as laid. down by the Privy Council, is shared at this moment by almost every Dean and Chapter in the country, and certhinly by the Dean and Canons of St. Paul's. Under the terms of a recent decision, ' we all ought to wear copes at the administration of the Holy. Communion on the principal festivals of the Church ; and, as a matter of fact, we do wear only surplices. If the Church Association were to institute proceedings against us on this- account, I should think less of its party animosity, and more of the sincerity of its professions of a desire to uphold the law, than I do at present; but, in view of the ridiculous object of the proceed- ings, I should term them a persecution. If, on the other hand, I were punished for teaching the Pope's supremacy, or tran- substantiation, or the worship of the Blessed Virgin, or for deny- ing original sin, or the Atonement, or the Godhead of our Lord and the duty of adoring Him, or the personality of the Holy Spirit, or the grace and power of the Sacraments—whatever else I might think or say about it—I could hardly, in view of the Church's formal language and the gravity of the matters at stake, describe myself as being "persecuted."
The question may seem to be only a verbal one. But words are powers, and when feeling runs high, a single word may in- fluence events. Certainly Mr. Dale's situation, however we- may agree to describe it, is by no means a matter for merely academical handling. It suggests painful reflections as to the- administration of Church discipline in obedience to the terror- ising dictates of an implacable and crude fanaticism, with the result that one clergyman may omit a Church Creed at his dis- cretion, while another is locked up like a felon for wearing a, vestment too many. It suggests grave questions, too, as to the wisdom of the ecclesiastical statesmanship which, in a passing moment of ferocity and panic, placed the Public Worship Regulation Bill on the Statute-book. For the sake of all who have brought about Mr. Dale's imprisonment, even more than for his own, right-minded people must surely wish that he may be released with the least possible delay.—I am, Sir, &c., Christ Church, Oxford, November 6th. H. P. LIADON.
Previous page
