The tone taken by the higher Clergy in relation to
the repre- centation of the Laity- in the Church is not very promising to those who wish to see a Church living in the present, and not merely claiming to be the lineal descendant of a Church which once lived in the past. Thus at a diocesan conference held last week at Oxford, the Bishop of Oxford said "That to speak of reforming Convocation by putting the laity into it was an extraordinary misuse of language. That Conference (the Diocesan Conference), was an excellent institution, and the Cor- poration of London was an excellent institution, but they would hardly reform the Conference by adding to it the Corporation of London. The addition of the laity to the Convocation of the Clergy would simply destroy the Convocation of the Clergy. It would create an altogether new body ; and that they are perfectly entitled to do, but they were not to call it reforming Convocation." If that is a mere verbal criticism, of Course it is also a very unim- portant one. Nobody cares about the mere name. But if it means that the Convocation of the Clergy of the Church have any right to represent the Church, without being associated with the laity,—which is what we suppose the Bishop to mean,—then his view may be described as a species of Anglican Vaticanism. It is a view indeed destructive of the Church, except to those who hold the sacerdotal theory that the life of the Church is the life of its priests, and that the laity have, as members of the Church, nothing to do but to receive teaching of those implicitly the priests.
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