A Few Facts and Testimonies concerning Ritualism. By Oxoniensis. (Longinans.)—Many
of the things quoted in this book we have noticed from time to time, as they happened to occur in books which have been reviewed in these columns. Even an advanced High Churchman may fairly be staggered when he sees them put together. When one man "claims to hold all Roman doctrine" and another avows it to be his object to bring back the ritual of the Church of England to what it was before the Reformation, when a third is willing to acknowledge the supremacy of the Pope, and a fourth thinks that the Reformation was "an unmitigated disaster," even excited partisans may well begin to hesitate. A chapter is given containing a list of the practices forbidden by the supreme ecclesiastical authority. At present the battle has gone so much against the Ritualists, and seems likely, after what has just been discovered about the Prayer-book of 1661, to go so much against them in the future, that we may hope for a proposal from the more reasonable of them for some modus vivendi. They might give up a good deal, for instance, in consideration of the legalisation of the Eastward position, which certainly has a certain prestige in its favour, and which men quite opposed to Romanising views of the Eucharist— Mr. Maurice, for instance—have employed.
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