ST. RAPHAEL'S, BRISTOL.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."]
Sin,—The difficulties with which Bishops have to contend in upholding and enforcing the Laws Ecclesiastical are so great, that I feel sure that you would not wittingly have misrepresented the action of the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol in the St. Raphael's case. It is true that the Bishop has withdrawn his licence from the Rev. A. H. Ward, the Chaplain of St. Raphael's, Bristol, in consequence of the chaplain not only refusing to conform to the law, but informing the Bishop that he intended to persist in deliberately breaking it. The Bishop really had no option in the matter. You are, however, in error in assuming that the Bishop took proceedings under " the ad captroalum and mischievous Act " known as the Public Worship Regulation Act. The case did not come under the provisions of that Act. The chaplain was licensed by the Bishop to the chaplaincy of the Sailors' College, Bristol, on cer- tain conditions, one of those conditions being a conformity with the laws of the Established Church. It was therefore immaterial by what means the Bishop was informed of the illegal practices of the chaplain,—whether by the agency of "aggrieved parishioners" of the parish within which the Sailors' College is situated, or of the Archdeacon, or of the Rural Dean. Mr. NVard himself admitted them ; and after the Bishop himself and the Archdeacon had striven earnestly but ineffectually to induce Mr. Ward to conform to the law, I submit that it would have amounted to a grave scandal to the Church, if the Bishop had not withdrawn his
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