"THE BISHOP CtF OXFORD AND CHURCH REPRE- SENTATION.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR:1
Sre,—In a passage of your last number, referring to the pro- ceedings of a late Diocesan Conference at Oxford, you report some observations made by its president, by which you suppose him to mean that the Convocation of the Clergy have a right to represent the Church, without being associated with the laity. Will you allow me to explain that I neither said nor meant what you suggest ? I have no doubt that whenever the Church of England shall have a real autonomy, the ordering of its affairs must reside in a mixed assembly of clergy and laity. I think that it ought to be so, and I have acted on this view in promoting the establishment of a Diocesan Conference, in which the pro- portion of the laity to the clergy is as three to two. But I con- tend that it would be an error—not in language only—to attempt to construct such an assembly out of the Convocations of the Clergy. They have a constitutional history, as old as that of Parliament itself, which ought not to be rudely closed. They are, moreover, as Provincial Synods, a part of the ecclesiastical System of universal Christendom. Yet further, they are the deli- berative assemblies belonging to an ancient and learned profession, which has as good a right—to say the least—as any other pro- fession, or order, to. treat of its own affairs in its own Council. Historically, ecclesiastically, and socially, Synods and Convoca-
tions of the Clergy have a right to exist, and to be summoned from time to time, as need may require, even though the general legislative power of the Church may reside in an assembly of quite another kind. I should not have troubled you with a mere verbal explanation ; you will see, I think, that there is a distinction in substance between my meaning and that which you ascribed to my words.—I am, Sir, Sm., J. F. Oxon.
[Of course we gladly withdraw a criticism founded on what must have been the too brief report given us by the Times of the Bishop's words, which we quoted verbatim from that report.—. ED. Spectator.]
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