THE RIDSDALE JUDGMENT.
IT is greatly to be regretted, in the interests of peace and charity, that the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council should have thought themselves obliged to reaffirm the Purchas Judg- ment in the matter of Vestments. It is probable that a great number of those affected by this decision will believe honestly, if mistakenly, that the conclusion of the Court was, in some degree, dictated by considerations of policy rather than of pure law, and in the very critical position in which recent theological controversies have placed the Church of England, there was no need for this further addition to the existing materials of strife. When the jurisdiction of the highest Ecclesiastical Court is openly challenged by a large section of the Clergy, it is unfortunate that any suspicion should be entertained of the perfect impartiality of the tribunal. Nor can it be denied that there is a primd facie excuse for the view which the Ritualist party will take of this part of the Ridsdale Judgment. The un- learned reader of the Prayer-book would assuredly suppose that vestments are legal under the Ornaments Rubric,—sip- posing, of course, that he has first been informed that vestments were included among those ornaments of the minister which "were in this Church of England by the authority of Parliament in the second year of the reign of King Edward VI." He reads in the rubric that these orna- ments of the minister "shall be retained and be in use," and he naturally concludes that he has only to ascertain what were the vestments worn in the second year of Edward VL to know what are the vestments which are now to be "retained and be in use." Consequently, the judgment of the Judicial Committee has to start with the disadvantage of being opposed to what looks like the common-sense view of the law, and this, in the case of a judgment which is sure to be fiercely contro- verted, is a very great misfortune. Nor, we must confess, do we see the least reason why the Judges should have courted this disadvantage. They have undoubtedly made out a much stronger case than it seemed possible to make out for holding that vestments are not ordered by the Ornaments Rubric. They read the Ornaments Rubric as though it ran,— such ornaments of the minister "shall be retained and be in use as were in this Church of England by the authority of Parliament in the second year of the reign of King Edward VI., except in so far as these ornaments were other. wise ordered by the Book of Advertisements put forth in the reign of Queen Elizabeth." They prove, we admit, that there is strong reason to think that the framers of the Ornaments Rubric did mean it to be qualified in this way, and j if the question had come before them in the shape of a prose- I cution for not using the vestments apparently ordered by the ; rubric, no exception could have been taken to their judgment. But it is strange that they should have forgotten—what the Ritualist Clergy will certainly not forget—that whether the framers of the Ornaments Rubric did or did not mean it to be qualified in this way, they did not so qualify it as a matter of fact. The evidence of their intention may be so con- clusive that a clergyman may be fully justified in acting on that rather than on their actual words, but this does not seem to be a ground for disregarding altogether the un- doubted fact that they did not put their intention into words. Why should not the clergyman who wears vestments have the benefit of the letter of the rabric, while the clergyman who discards vestments has the benefit of what the Judicial Com- mittee believe to be the spirit of the rubric? Supposing that the Judges had wished to leave the question open, they might surely have found a sufficient justification for doing so in the fact that in order to sustain their own interpretation of the Ornaments Rubric, they have to import IN',ords into it which are not in the original text. There is much, we concede, to be said for the view that when the framers of the rubric spoke of the authority of Parliament in the second year of Edward VI., they raeant that authority, so far as it had not been super- seded by Queen Elizabeth's Advertisements. But there is something also to be said for the view that if the framers of the rubric had taken the words in this sense, they would themselves have introduced the required qualification, and not have left it to be introduced by Lord Cairns, 215 years afterwards. There was another reason why the Judges might have taken this view, in the fact that it had been held by a Judge of very great eminence and impartiality, the late Dr. Lushingthn. He regarded the argument that the last Statute of Uniformity, by referring to the First Book of Common Prayer of Edward VI., excluded everything effected in the in- terval between 1549 and 1662—and consequently the changes ordered by the Advertisements of Elizabeth—as "irresistible." Dr. Lushington has been shown, we think, to have overstated the case when he used the word "irresistible," but the fact that he thought so highly of the argument might have moved the Judicial Committee to leave the question open. In dealing with the position of the celebrant, in another part of their judgment, they remember that the case with which they have to deal " is one which may assume the character of a penal charge," and on that ground they hold it "necessary to be well assured that there is a direction free from ambiguity" how the priest shall stand. Why did they not feel it equally necessary to be assured that there is a direction free from ambiguity what the priest shall wear They are of opinion that the words "standing before the table" are fully satisfied by the priest's standing ot the north side and looking towards the south, but they also think that these same worde authorise him to stand on the west side, and look- ing towards the east. Why should they not equally have held, that though the vrcirds, "such ornaments as were in this Church of England in the Hecond year of Edward VI." are fully satisfied by the use of " such ornaments as were in this Church of England in 1556," yet these same words authorise the minister to use the ornaments which were undoubtedly in this Church of England in 1549?
It will be seen that out. quarrel with the Judicial Committee is the very opposite of that which the Ritualists will wage with them. We do not accuse them of preferring policy to strict law, we simply find fault with them because, when the law was fairly open to two interpretations, they disregard policy by restricting it to one interpretation. It may, perhaps, be disputed that it would have been policy to have allowed vestments. We answerthat it is wise to allow anything in the Church of England which is not unmistakably forbidden by an unmistakable law. It cannot be contended that the interpretation which the judicial Committee have placed upon the Ornaments' Rubric is certain enough to answer this description. It is at most the more probable opinion that vestments were not contemplated by this rubric. But a probability of this kind is something very different from an mimintakable prohibition of vestmeets. Consequently the judgment of the Judicial Committee is distinctly a narrowing judo:tient. It restricts the liberty which the Clergy have hitherto been supposed to have enjoyed under the existing law. We do not mean that this is a matter of any importance in itself, or that the Church of England will be the worse because all her ministers wear the surplice, instead of, as now' some wearing the surplice and some the chasuble. But we do mean that in the present circumstances of the Church of England such a limitation may become a matter of very serious importance. The circumstances under which vestments are condemned are these :—The Ritualist party is divided into two distinct sections —the Extreme section, which rejects the authority in ecclesiastical matters of the Judicial Committee, or of any other Civil Court; and the I Moderate section, which thinks itself hardly dealt with by ' some recent judgments of the Civil Courts, though it is not 1 yet prepared to go the length of denying their jurisdic- tion. It is plain that nothing that the Judicial Com- mittee could have done would conciliate the former ' section. So far, consequently, there was no need to con- sider the policy of this or that decision, supposing that the choice between them was fairly open to the Judges. But a decision which affirmed the prima facie meaning of the Ornaments Rubric, while recognising the legitimacy of that more recondite interpretation which imported other words into it, would have satisfied the latter section, and removed the feeling of injury which the judgment actually delivered will only intensify. It may be said that the concession of the Eastward position will be enough to conciliate the moderate Ritualists, and to place a barrier between them and their more extreme allies. It may be so, but it is running a wholly needless risk to restrict the concession in this fashion. We feel little doubt that by leaving the Eastward position and vestments open questions, the process of separation would have been successfully accomplished. We are very far from being equally sure that it will be successfully accom- plished by the concession of the Eastward position alone. It must be remembered that there are thousands of clergymen who have never dreamt of wearing vestments themselves who are yet firmly convinced that vestments are legal. The Judicial Committee has now, by a very subtle and ingenious argument, maintained them to be illegal ; but the Clergy will continue to look at the words of the Rubric, and as the words stand, they most undoubtedly direct that vestments shall be retained and be in use. We shall not be surprised if the effect of this new grievance is to knit the moderate section into closer unity with the extreme section. The moderates will argue that as the law has been narrowed against the extreme men when the letter of it at least makes in their favour, there is no security that it will not equally be narrowed against the moderates in some future trial. Added to the in- stinct of self-preservation will be the more generous dislike of deserting their friends when they are in trouble, and thus the first result of the Ridsdale Judgment may be to in- troduce vestments into many churches into which they have not yet found their way. If so, unless ParHament shows itself better advised than the Judicial Committee, which is more than unlikely, there are very serious troubles in store for the Established Church. It would have been a different matter if these dangers had been incurred by a de- cision given in obedience to a law which could not possibly admit of two interpretations. But in the present instance, they have been incurred by a decision given in deference to a law the meaning of which is at best doubtful. Where two interpretations are equally permissible, there is a fair opening for considerations of policy to come in, and we shall not attempt to disguise our regret that the Judicial Committee should have thought itself bound to exclude them in the pre- sent instance. We fear that the 12th of May, 1877, may hereafter be looked back to as the day on which the State entered with a light heart into a conflict the end of which it did not trouble itself to forecast.
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