The House of Laity on Thursday, February 9th, agreed to
discuss at _ once the Rubrics concerning Reservation. The House agreed to the first Rubric and to the second with slight amendment. After rejecting onlyone amend- ment to the third Rubric the House agreed to pass it., The fourth Rubric was agreed to with Lord Thigh Cecil's amendment by which the elements would be kept in " the wall of the Church, near to the Holy Table, so far as conveniently may be, but not in the wall behind the Table." Subsequently the House passed a motion requesting .the Bishops to consider the advisability of issuing a statement that priests and laity may " with a quiet conscience communicate either fasting or non- fasting." On Wednesday, when these debates were over, a letter from Dr. Relton appeared in the Times in which he urged a new compromise between Parliament and the representative bodies of the Church. The whole letter was worthy of consideration, but the point lies in this sentence : " If the Prayer Book gives legal sanction to the New Prayer Book minus Reservation, and the. Church refrains from asking for legal sanction in this one respect, the State may well adopt an attitude of benevolent inactivity towards what is, after all, only a theoretical anomaly." • *
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