16 SEPTEMBER 1899, Page 12

[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR, — Your correspondent, Mr. Piers

Claughton, has decided with p/usquana-archiepiscopal authority that incense and pro_ sessional lights are "essential to the catholicity of the English Church." Some rather singular results would seem to flow from this doctrine, e.g.:—

(a) The Church of the first three centuries, which used no incense, cannot have been Catholic at all.

(b) For some three centuries since the Reformation the English Church was entirely un-Catholic.

(c) The practice of all the clergy of the Church of England in the present generation, save some four hundred at the most, puts them out of the pale of catholicity.

If Mr. P. Claughton does not accept these conclusions, he had better reconsider his truly astounding premiss.—I am,