LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY'S DECISION. Ito rim Enrron or yes utle007.01:1 Sra,—I have endeavoured for some years as a diligent reader of the Spectator to grasp your interpretation of the Confirma- tion rubric. I understand you to maintain that this does apply to our own members, so that those baptized and brought up as members of the Church of England and desiring to remain in it may not be admitted to Holy Communion unless they axe confirmed, but that at our peril we may not reject members of other Communions. This would mean that if one of our people refused to accept this well-known rule and still wished to be admitted to Holy Communion he could leave us, attach himself to sonic other society, and tell us to refuse him Communion if we dared. Such • position seems to me quite unworkable. It is a sheer impossibility to keep the rubric for our own people if we ignore it for everybody else. From your article of last Saturday I gather that you have come to recognize this, and are now of opinion that, so far as admission is concerned, it does not matter in the least whether any one member or non-member of the Church of England is con- firmed or not, that, indeed, we have no business to ask any question except whether the would-be communicant is • notorious evil liver. Is this no P—I am, Sir, As., S. Mary's Vicarage, Nottingham. T. FIELD, D.D.
[If our correspondent will re-read our articles, he will see that he has entirely misstated our position. The clergy are required, not only to see to it that children are con- firmed, but to prevent them corning to Communion until, they are confirmed or are ready and desirous to be oon- firmed. The case of grown-up men and women is quite different. They are not to be refused the Communion whether they call themselves members of the Church of England or not, and whether or not they have been confirmed. That is not a very logical conclusion, like plenty of other things in our Constitution, civil and religious, but it is none the leas the law, and works well. Our correspondent is, however, quite accurate when he says that our view is that notorious and open evil living is the only bar allowed by the law of the land and of the Church, and this he will find to be the fact if a test case is brought into the Courts.—ED. Spectator.]
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