The Archbishop of York writes to Wednesday's Time,s, to prove
that the blundering date in the Purchas Judgment- 1687, instead of the true date of Archdeacon, afterwards Bishop, Cosin's visitation, namely, 1627—was a printer's blunder, and not a blunder made in the draft of the Judgment. The evidence he produces is a letter from Mr. Reeve, the Registrar of the Privy Council, dated February 1st, 1882, positively stating that the blunder did not exist in the draft from which the judgment was read. That, of course, is quite decisive. But it does not exempt the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, who were responsible for the Purchas Judgment, from the charge of gross carelessness, for the following excellent reason :—their Lordships quoted Archdeacon Cosin, to show what they call "the state of the law" as to the attitude of the priest in the prayer of consecration. But the law was one thing in 1627, and quite a different thing in 1687, after the revision of 1662. Archdeacon Cosin's words used in 1627 show the state of the law before the revision of 1662, and have no bearing at all on the state of the law after the revision of 1662, when the words directing the priest to stand " before the table" were intro- duced. We rbgard the matter as most trivial, but not so trivial as that a Court of Appeal should think itself at liberty to quote as evidence of the rubrical law after 1662, what was, in fact, only evidence of the very different rubrical law of 1552. It is this appearance of special pleading which has so often discredited the existing-Ecclesiastical Courts.
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