Canon Liddon's controversy in the Times with Monsignor Lapel and
"An English Dignitary,"—whom Dr. Liddon himself appears to identify with the Archbishop of York,— has been going on all the week, and is interesting chiefly for the study it opens out to us of the difficulties of a fervent, delicate, and subtle mind in finding reasons for adhering to the Anglican via media which do not also hold for going far beyond it into pure Romanising. Canon Liddon has no difficulty at all in showing that the formulae of the English Church were intended to leave room for a very High- Church view of doctrine, and that even as regards the Real Presence, those who drew up the Communion Service and its rubrics expressly intended to leave room for a belief in that doctrine. But what he does not observe is that the fixed intention at the same period certainly was to keep back all ostentatious display of such doctrines,—to be studiously moderate, not to say reticent, in the ceremonial expression of them. And this is precisely what
the Ritualists will not do. And very naturally. This age is an age in which all principles are pushed to their limits, and not an age of compromise. The compromises of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are intolerable to us, and therefore it is that Canon Liddon finds the duty of at once restraining R itualists and rebuking Puritans, too hard for him. Neither party is con- tent to keep its real principle in the background,—to worship in a manner which may suit either the one principle or the other.
Previous page
