1 SEPTEMBER 1906, Page 13

[To THE EDITOR ON THE " SPIICTIIT011.1 Sin, — You call attention

(Spectator, August 25th) to the argument—a very unsound one—that because the ornaments rubric legalises the ornaments of church and minister as they were in the last years of Henry VIII., we must accept the doctrinal system which was then established. But the vest- ments and ornaments were not peculiar to the High Roman doctrines of the Sacrament. They were never apparently objected to by Wycliffe and his followers, who nevertheless held that the doctrine of Transubstantiation was nothing less than heresy, and that in the absence of Transubstantiation St. Thomas Aquinas was right in asserting that the divine adoration of the elements would be idolatry. This is not a Church Association argument, but St. Thomas's ; and it is