THE BISHOP OF OXFORD ON RITUAL PROSECUTIONS.
THE Bishop of Oxford has published in the form of a tract the introductory portion of his recently delivered charge, in which he deals with the prosecution and imprisonment of Mr. Bell Cox. For so clear-headed and transparently honest a man, the Bishop's criticism strikes us as singularly wide of the mark. He fails completely to seize the real points at issue, as a little reflection will show him. But let us preface our remarks by observing that the merits or demerits of Ritualism are entirely irrelevant to the inquiry. We should argue as we are about to argue, and as we have argued on these matters throughout the controversy, if the dispute were about some Buddhist or Parsee observance. Now let us see how the Bishop approaches the subject. He denies with considerable indigna- tion that Mr. Bell Cox's imprisonment is in any sense of the term a "martyrdom." Doubtless the word "martyr "is often used in a loose way, and we do not question the Bishop's objection to it in the case of Mr. Bell Cox. But we cannot follow the Bishop's reasoning. "Even if the extent of his sufferings justified the parallel which the word suggests, the quality of them is inconsistent with it. For it implies that he was punished for doing some act which he believed to be right, or for not doing something which he conscientiously believed to be wrong. On this view he must be supposed to hold that the ordinary practice in ritual matters of nine Englishmen out of ten is contrary to law. If he is bound to wear a chasuble, so are they. If he is breaking the rubric when he celebrates the Holy Communion in a surplice, so are they If he had chosen to resign his benefice, no one would have molested him." We do not know how Mr. Bell Cox would have met this argument, but it appears to us to have nothing in it. Suppose Mr. Bell Cox or any other prosecuted clergyman believes that the equal and impartial administration of justice is a matter of supreme importance to the commonwealth, and that the administration of the law in the case of the Ritualists is undermining the authority of law in general, and is thus injurious to the best interests of society, is he not justified in forcing public attention to the matter by challenging what he believes to be the gross partiality of the administrators of justice ? Let it be assumed that the Privy Council decisions as to Ritualism are good law, and also that the Courts exercise a valid jurisdiction. Would there not be still a great wrong perpetrated of which a section of the clergy have a right to complain? The law which forbids a chasuble forbids also a stole of any colour. But does anybody believe that, if Mr. Bell Cox had been prosecuted for wearing a black stole, the Bishop of Liverpool would not have peremptorily vetoed the prosecution, in spite of his conscientious objection to the episcopal veto p Bishops and Cathedral dignitaries, moreover, are bound to wear copes by the very law which Mr. Bell Cox has been imprisoned for disobeying ; yet they set the law at defiance. What does this show ? It shows that the charge of" lawlessness " against the Ritualists is mere, though unconscious, hypocrisy. It is not to the law, as law, that homage is paid, but to popular prejudice. One set of men are imprisoned for unpopular violations of the law, while the vast majority are suffered to perpetrate with com- plete impunity any violations of the law which may chance to be popular. Surely such a scandalously unfair administration of justice is an evil so great as to justify some forcible exposure of it. The Bishop of Oxford and his brethren may rest assured that public sympathy will be enlisted on the side of persons who are made victims of this partiality, and may even accord them the title of martyrs. With what face can the Bishop of Liver- pool send to prison—for the permission to prosecute was his— one of his clergy for disobeying a law which the Bishop himself seta the example of disregarding ?
Nor can we understand what the Bishop of Oxford means by characterising Mr. Bell Cox's conduct as a "Plan of Cam- paign." "When a man chooses his plan of operations, and selects that which seems most likely to gain success, he is a free agent; opposition is not necessarily persecution." Here Mr. Bell Cox is represented as the man who began the campaign, as the assailant, while his prosecutor is merely engaged in resisting an unprovoked attack I What are the facts? Mr. Bell Cox simply conducted the services of his church as they had been conducted for years with the sanction of the Bishop, and with the entire approval of the parishioners. The prose- cutor, on the other hand, is neither a parishioner, nor has he ever been a member of the congregation. He had no grievance whatever, and the prosecution was therefore as wanton and unjustifiable as it is possible to imagine. And it is on this state of facts that the Bishop of Oxford accuses Mr. Bell Cox of having wantonly initiated a "Plan of Cam- paign," and "endeavoured to bring the law into discredit by invoking a sentence of imprisonment which he intended to defy." We really cannot understand what the Bishop means by stating the case in this way. Nor is he more happy in his treatment of what Mr. Bell Cox regarded as the real crux of the whole question,—namely, the jurisdiction of the Court. "It is a great misfortune (if it be so)," says the Bishop, "that the Church should be 'in bondage to Secular Courts;' it would be a worse misfortune that Spiritual Courts should decide wrongly." Would it? Let us see. If it be right, as the Bishop assumes, that Spiritual Courts should decide in spiritual causes as Secular Courts do in secular, which is the greater evil,—that the one kind of jurisdiction should invade the province of the other, or that the rightful jurisdiction should sometimes "decide wrongly"? Is it better, for example, that the Home Secretary, if he were an eminent lawyer, should invade ad libitum the jurisdiction of the Chief Justice, or that the Chief Justice should occasionally" decide wrongly" P In truth, the Bishop of Oxford, without intending it, has enunciated a dangerous and revolutionary doctrine. "Error," be says, "does not become truth because it is spoken by the lips of ecclesiastical, but perhaps incapable, Judges." Granted. But surely the remedy M to remove the incapable Judges, not to allow their jurisdiction, while it exists, to be usurped by an ille- gitimate tribunal. The Bishop confuses capacity with authority. A subaltern may be a better strategist than his General ; but that fact will not entitle him to usurp the functions of the General.
Mr. Bell Cox has placed his own view of his case concisely before the public in a temperate article in Murray's Magazine for July. He claims there the authority of the late Archbishop Tait and of Lord Penzance for the course which he took in his own trial. Daring one of the sittings of the Ecclesiastical Courts Commission, Archbishop Tait asked :—" Supposing a man thinks it a very good Court for certain civil purposes established by Act of Parliament, but that it is not a Court which can consider a case like his, how is he to make good his objection ?" To which Lord Penzance, with Archbishop Tait's approval, made answer as follows :—" The answer to it, I take, is this, that he may appear under protest, and take any legal objee. tion the Court can deal with. But if his objection is one of conscience, which may be powerful with him, but does not fall within the range of the Court to admit, then there is no course but not to appear." Mr. Bell Cox acted on this dictum. He refused to appear before a Court whose authority he disputed, and took the consequences. "And we must continue to agitate," he says, "and suffer, if needs be, until our demands for a restoration of the Ecclesiastical Courts, especially of the Bishop's own Court, are conceded, and matters are so arranged that we have Courts before which we can honestly and conscientiously plead. Give us these, and I verily believe it will be found that, whatever the decisions of those Courts may be, we at least will loyally obey them." It is certainly unfortunate that Lord Penzance should have accepted the appointment of Dean of Arches from the two Primates, and then declined to qualify in the usual way, for the purpose of openly repudiating the ecclesiastical character which essentially belonged to his office. The present Ecclesi- astical Courts have been discredited by the Report of the Royal Commission, and if the Bishops are wise, they will carry out the prudent policy of Archbishop Tait by vetoing, as they have the power of doing, such wholly unprovoked and purely mis- chievous prosecutions as that which the Bishop of Liverpool sanctioned in the case of Mr. Bell Cox. And, above all, if they make such a strong point of obedience to the law, let them set the example of obedience,—first in their own persons, and then in enforcing the law equitably all round.
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