LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
CHURCH EIR,ENICA.
LTO THE EDTTOE OF THE " SPECTATOR." J
SIR,—The interest which the Spectator has shown in the chief Church questions now pending, leads me to hope that you will admit a few considerations which seem to me more or less pertinent from the point of view of one who seeks to join the company of the peacemakers.
(1.) It appears to me neither loyal nor respectful towards a man placed in the Archbishop's position, to discount and dis- credit his decision in the Bishop of Lincoln's case by protests like those which have of late been widely signed. In the reasons which he gave for overruling the Bishop's objection to his juris- diction—reasons which the Bishop himself has accepted, though he still retains his conviction that another course would have been preferable—there was at least strongprina-facie evidence that he had a right to choose between the alternative courses that were open to him. Is it not wiser to wait, in the hope that be may be guided to a right judgment which may make for peace, rather than to tell him beforehand that his deasior, whatever it be, will carry with it no moral authority P Per- sonally, I think that the Synod of Cum-provincial Bishops is too large a body for judicial functions, and too liable to be swayed by the impulses of party feeling.
(2.) No one can look with greater sympathy than I do to the part which the Dean of Peterborough has taken in proposing, as a modus vivendi, the recognition of the principle of elasticity and comprehensiveness, rather than of a rigorous uniformity as applied to the interpretation of the Ornaments' Rubric. If we could secure a maximum and minimum of ritual, each of which might be practised without the risk of prosecution, a great step would be taken towards mitigating the evils of our time, and might open the way to a more definite formula concordize. But, alas ! I cannot bring myself to believe that this is within the limits of possibility at the present time. I cannot help feeling, with Mr. Teignmouth Shore, and many others, that the Convocation of the Province of Canterbury has no power to declare that to be legal which the Final Court of Appeal has declared to be illegal ; and if it did, the Court would naturally, and from a constitutional point of view, rightly, treat their declaration as waste-paper. The end aimed at cannot be attained without an Act of Parliament, and the proposed maxima and minima of ritual, if the two Convocations can ever agree in settling the. n—in defining, i.e., what ornaments of the Church and ministers were in use by authority of Parliament in the second year of King Edward VI.—must be appended as schedules to such an act. Can we look forward with any hope or satisfaction to that process P The radical defect of the Dean of Peterborough's proposal is that it attempts an im- possible transformation. The one thing absolutely certain about the Ornaments' Rubric is that it forms part of an Act of Uniformity, and not of Variability; that the idea of a maximum and minimum is altogether alien from it, that what- ever it means, it was meant to be binding upon all. You cannot pour the "new wine" of comprehensiveness into the "old bottles" of uniformity. You cannot turn the tightest of red-tape into an elastic band.
(3.) There remains the alternative course, which it is sur- mised both by the Spectator and the Guardian to be that advo- cated by the "Churchmen in Council," that of the adoption by the two Houses of the two Convocations, of a new Ornaments' Rubric based on the principle of comprehensiveness, and to be submitted to Parliament so as to acquire a legal sanction. An Act of Uniformity Amendment Act, limited to the Ornaments' Rubric, seems to be the goal at which they aim. I confess that theoretically I agree with them. I see no prospect of a permanent settlement except by the removal of that damnosa hcereditas which is the cause of our present difficulties and distress. I can conceive of no ecclesiastical document less worthy of our respect. Not to speak now of its earlier history, as it appears in its present form in the Prayer-Book of 1662, it is a monument either of a crassa incuria, allied with the ill-temper which in part caused it, or, in Bishop Thirlwall's language, of "an odious duplicity." If the Bishops who took part in the Savoy Conference did not mean to "bring back" the vestments for- bidden by the second Prayer-Book of Edward VI., there was an almost inconceivable carelessness in retaining and expanding a rubric which, in its natural obvious meaning, seems to sanction them. If they did mean to restore them, they were simply throwing dust in the eyes of the Puritan objectors when they met their objections by reasons which were limited to a vindication of the surplice, as though that were the only matter in dispute. And as it was, they left law and usage in a conffict—to quote Bishop Thirlwall's words once more—as irreconcilable as that which we find, in the higher regions of theology, between "God's sovereignty and man's free agency."*
So far, then, I agree with the supposed intentions of the "Churchmen in Council," and could say of the Ornaments' Rubric that "the Church were well rid of it." But here again, I say it with profound regret, I do not see my way to action. In the present state of parties, with the Church Association, and the Protestant Churchmen's Alliance, and the English Church Union raising their several war-cries, with the Guardian and Spectator throwing cold water on all such attempts at settle- ment, with the short sessions of Convocation and its impotence to act, with the difficulty of scheduling the "ornaments "of the Church and of the ministers thereof, within any reasonable imits of time, or with any prospect of reconciling discordant views, with the utter hopelessness of passing a Bill with such schedules through the present House of Commons, I own that the plan of which I speak seems to me not to be within "a measurable distance of practical politics," and I hold aloof from it, on the ground of the inopportuneness of the time. I think it better for a while to "bear the ills we have," than "to fly to others that we know not of," and I hesitate to begin a controversy to which I see no near prospect of a desirable issue. We have come to the stage in which it is bat too true that nec morbos, nec remedia, pail possumus.
(4.) For the present, then, it seems wiser to keep in the attitude of a patient waiting on events,-1 would rather put it, more reverently, a waiting upon the Power that "shapes our ends," —not without hope, such as belongs to those who take their place among the passi graviora, that dabit Deus his quo que finem. And I find grounds for that hope, as in the very movements, which, though they seem to me likely to be abortive, are yet proofs of a yearning after better things, so also in the additional strength given to the Episcopal veto by the recent decision in the St. Paul's case. If that decision is confirmed, as we may hope it will be, by the House of Lords, we shall have a powerful safeguard against the policy of systematic prosecu- tion. By a happy and unlooked-for coincidence, we shall have a modern Act of Parliament substantially in harmony with the direction of the Prayer-Book, that to "appease all diversity and for the resolution of all doubts," "the parties that so doubt or diversely take anything" shall " alway resort to the Bishop of the Diocese, who, by his discretion, shall take order for the quieting and appeasing of the same." All that is needed to profit by that coincidence is the temper of loyalty and obedience, and that ought not to be so hard to find in the future as it has been in the recent past.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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