Lord Penzance delivered judgment on Thursday in the case of
the Rev. C. J. Ridsdale, incumbent of St. Peter's, Folkestone. On the question of the vestments, the use of the alb and chasuble in celebrating the Communion, all argument had been reserved for the Court of Appeal, Lord Penzance being himself bound by the decision of that Court in the Pinches judgment ; and though he gave formal judgment in keeping with the Purchas judgment, of course that judgment will have no independent weight. But in deciding that a clergyman is bound to assure himself that in administering the Communion there will be, in accordance with the rubric, four, or three communicants at the least, he was on new ground. And as Mr. Ridsdale had, by his own account, entertained "no positive expectation one way or the other" before administering the Communion to one single communicant in a church full of spectators, Lord. Penzance adjudged him to have broken the law. He also held that the erection of the crucifix (as distinguished from a cross) above the screen, and the use of certain pictures called "the Stations of the Cross," werJ not mere bits of ecclesiastical ornamentation or architecture, but adapted, if not intended, to blend with indi- vidual acts of devotion, and therefore inconsistent with the spirit of the 22nd Article. He ordered them to be removed, leaving it open to the respondent to apply for a faculty to replace any of them which might seem not open to objection. The judgment will satisfy the Low Church party, but even the High Church will find it difficult, we think, to discover any real flaw in it. The decision as to the crucifix seems to be the one most questionable, since the evidence that the crucifix was likely to be ,used super- stitiously, and not as a mere artistic memorial of the crucifixion, was not what can be called exactly substantial.
