MR. DALE'S SUPREMACY.
Ia letter which we print to-day, Dr. Liddon contests our in- terpretation terpretation of the word "persecution," as applied to Mr. Dale. The immediate difference between us is, perhaps, one of words, but underneath that difference there lies one of more importance. It is quite true that we meant to " imply that the reasons for pro- secuting Mr. Dale are wholly insufficient," and if pro- secution for insufficient reasons is necessarily persecution, it follows that Mr. Dale is being persecuted. We can hardly believe, however, that Dr. Liddon is prepared to say that prosecutions instituted on insufficient grounds are necessarily persecutions. In almost every system of law there are some things forbidden and others ordained, which, " in the judg- ment of independent men, endowed with common-sense," might better have been left alone. But so long as the law remains unaltered, it is the duty of a good citizen to obey it, unless he is convinced that by obey- ing it he would be violating a law of greater obligation. Mr. Dale, we know, contends that his case is included in this exception. In Dr. Liddon's words, he wears vestments " because he believes that the Rubrical law of the Church of England, as interpreted by grammar, logic, and history, although not as interpreted by the Privy Council Committee, authorises or obliges him to wear them." At first sight, this looks like a claim set up on behalf of all the Queen's subjects to interpret the Statute Book for themselves. When the meaning of a law is in dispute, the persons who have to obey it are simply to ask themselves what light grammar, logic, and history have to throw upon the question. In other words, they have simply to ask themselves what they think is the meaning of the law, and so long as they conform to the interpretation thus arrived at, any assertion of the interpretation put on the words by a Court of Law,—if it involves punishing them for their private interpreta- tion,—is persecution. Of course, Dr. Liddon does not mean to claim this unchartered freedom for the whole community. What he really means, no doubt, is that there are cases in which the law of a Religious Society may, as regards the members of that society, take priority in for° conscientice of the law of the State, and that Mr. Dale's is one of these cases. The law which he has to obey is the " Rubrical Law of the Church of England," and when the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council pre- tend to interpret this Rubrical law in a way which is not con- sonant with either grammar, logic, or history, he is conscien- tiously obliged to disregard the Committee's decisions. - It is at this point that we and Dr. Liddon part company. If he set up this pretension on behalf of a Voluntary Church, we should entirely accept it. If Parliament had passed an Act for- bidding Roman Catholic priests to wear chasubles, or command- ing Baptist ministers to wear surplices, we should hold both enactments to be tyrannical. The Roman Catholic who insisted on wearing the vestments prescribed by the rubrical law of the Roman Catholic Church, or the Baptist minister who refused to wear a vestment forbidden by the rubrical law of the Baptist Church, would be standing up for liberty of conscience, and any suffering inflicted on him on that account would be rightly called persecution. But Dr. Liddon if we understand him rightly, makes a similar assertion on behalf of an Established Church. The highest Court in matters Ecclesiastical has, according to Dr. Liddon, no more right to interpret the Rubrical law of the Church of England, when the meaning of that law is disputed, than it would have if the Church of England were a voluntary society. We con- fess to being in some difficulty as to what, in Dr. Liddon's acceptation of the word, Establishment really stands for. As we understand it, it is an arrangement by which a religious society, in return for certain privileges and endowments, surrenders a certain measure of independence. Among the privileges obtained in the case of the Church of England was the investment of Church Courts with a coercive jurisdiction which, if the Church had remained a voluntary society, they would not have enjoyed ; and among the things surrendered, was the right of finally determining Ecclesiastical causes by purely Ecclesiastical tribunals. When the. Church Establishment took its present shape, this right was vested in the Court of Delegates, and from them it passed to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. But the Court of Delegates was as strictly a Court . of secular jurisdic- tion as the Judicial Committee, and the powers now exercised by the Judicial Committee have thus been exercised by a lay Court ever since the Reformation. If the Church of England finds this state of things intolerable, why does not she take some steps to put an end to it / When certain mini- sters of the Established Church of Scotland thought the rights claimed by the State inconsistent with their spiritual inde- pendence, they did not barricade their churches, or talk about their ties to their flocks being too sacred to be lightly severed.
Clergy and flocks together rejected a yoke which they could not conscientiously endure, and side by side with the Esta- blished Church of Scotland there rose up a Free Church, rivalling, and more than rivalling, it in numbers, zeal, and devo- tion. Why do not the Ritualists, if they cannot get the law altered, follow this example ? Because, Dr. Liddon may answer, ours is an Episcopal Church, and so long as there are no Bishops on their side, the Ritualists cannot go out into the wilderness as a complete and organised community. This reply, sup- posing it to be given, does but put the extraordinary nature of Mr. Dale's pretensions in a stronger light. When the Prus- sian priests came into collision with the May Laws, the Bishops had come into collision with them first. When the Religious Orders in France resist what they hold to be an unjust attack, their Bishops make common cause with them. But Mr. Dale is as much in rebellion to the Bishop of London,—nay, to every Bishop on the Bench, as though he were d true-blue Presbyterian. Per- haps he will say that the Bishops have shown themselves so neglectful of their duty to the Church in its present conflict with the State, that he cannot conscientiously pay any heed to their admonitions. We could better understand his re- jection of this or that authority, if there were any one author- ity that he would recognise. But he despises the Convocation of Canterbury just as heartily as he despises the Bishops. During the whole time that these ritual controversies have been going on, Convocation has been yearly in session, and if it disapproved of the judgments of the Judicial Committee in the Purchas case and the Ridsdale case, there was nothing to prevent it from presenting to Parliament a new Ornaments Rubric, making it unmistakably plain that vestments, lights, . incense, and the other ceremonial particulars, for persisting in using which Mr. Dale is in prison, are authorised by the Church of England. As a matter of fact, it did nothing of the kind. Knowing what the interpretation put on the Rubrical law of the Church of England by the highest temporal Court was, it took no step to challenge that interpretation. In this way, Convocation became responsible for the reading of the law adopted by the Judicial Committee. Even now, Mr. Dale's in- dependence of authority is not exhausted. It used formerly to be contended by Ritualists that the Court of Arches was the true Spiritual Court of the Church of England, and that the vice of the existing system lay in the subjection of this spiritual tri- bunal to a secular Court. But Mr. Dale disobeys the decrees of the Court of Arches just as blithely as he disobeys the decrees of the Privy Council. A part at least of Lord Pen- zance's monitions refer to things which were determined to be contrary to the Rubrical law of the Church of England by Sir Robert Phillimore, to the validity of whose appointment as Dean of the Arches no objection was ever raised, wheel the Parches case was before him. Before, therefore, Dr. Liddon can establish his claim on behalf of Mr. Dale, that he interprets the Rubrics " by grammar, history, and logic," he must show whence Mr. Dale derives his title to be, where grammar, history, or logic is concerned, in all causes and over all persons within the Church of England supreme. Until this is done, we shall continue to hold that Mr. Dale's attitude towards the Judicial Committee and Lord Penzance is as inconsistent with his position as a minister of an Established Church, as his attitude towards the Bishops, Convocation, and the old Court of Arches would be with his position as a minister of a Voluntary Church. The only thing that neither is inconsistent with is his position as a minister of a Church of his own. And yet, notwithstanding all this, we entirely agree with Dr. Liddon that he ought not to have been sent to prison, and that the fact that he is there is a striking testimony to the folly of the" ecclesiastical statesmanship which, in a moment of ferocity and panic, placed the Public Worship Regulation Bill on the Statute Book."
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