CHURCH REFORM OR CHURCH DLSESTABLLSHMENT? (To 'MS EDITOR OF THS
"SPECTATOR.")
Sin,—Canon Trevor's letter is full of good sense, but I think he fails to see how the question is affected by the recent and promised (or threatened) legislation.
What is to be the working of the Public Worship Regulation Act? Mr. Disraeli said it was to put down Ritualism. Well, the Ritualists, like the conies, are " a feeble folk," and may be put down ; but also, like the conies, they are difficult to catch, and they have a good many holes to run to. Still, with legal ferrets, they may be dislodged ; and after showing some sport, they may be exterminated. But will our sportsmen be satisfied with one kind of game ? The Primates gave a different account of the Bill from the Premier ; it was not to be directed against any ene section of the Church, it was to set us all to rights all round. And will the Bishops generally give leave to prosecute a High-Churchman for the Eastward position, and refuse to prose- cute a Broad-Churchman for omitting the Athanasian Creed? The fact is, the peace based on mutual understandings, for which Canon Trevor pleads, can only last as long as the understandings are mutual You may get on very well without lightning-con- ductors, as long as there is no electricity in the air ; but the currents of the ecclesiastical atmosphere, by their mutual friction, are rapidly generating electricity, and we must get up conductors of some kind, or we shall have powder magazines blowing up all about.
Still, I desire revision no more than Canon Trevor. Old chains gall far less than new ones ; and if you revise one or two rubrics to adapt them to changed circumstances, you imply that the rest need no such adaptation. But what we want and what we must have is a modus vivendi,—some definite recognition of the right of each of the great Church parties to exist. The Ritualists may have to go, though I fear we may lose in them a
valuable, if somewhat feminine type of religiousness, just as Mr. Voysey had to go, though in him we lost a fearless and outspoken honesty which is not too common ; but it is too much to hope that the Act will then be allowed to rust, and even if the Bishops have the courage to stop all further prosecutions in the teeth of a cry of partiality and injustice, still we must remember that this is but an unsatisfactory security, and further, that we are promised a Bill to apply the same procedure to doctrine, which, being carried, we should do wisely to begin at once to collect gopher- wood to prepare an ark against the deluge.
On the whole, was not the Bishop of Peterborough guided by a statesmanlike instinct when he threw out the suggestion, at which he got so frightened, of neutral zones to be guaranteed by Parliament, within which a Pax Dei should be proclaimed ? Give the High-Church priest of a High-Church congregation leave to face to any point of the compass, west included ; guarantee to the Low-Church minister the gown in the pulpit, evening Com- munions, and the right to alter the words of administration ; and free the laity in general, when they are blessed with a pastor of common-sense, from the Athanasian Creed, and you will at least have said to the rising tide of mutual persecution, "Thus far shalt thou come, and no farther," and have established the principle that rubrics were made for men, and not men for rubrics.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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