LORD PENZANCE'S FIRST JUDGMENT L ORD PENZANCE'S first judgment will give
those of the public who understand matters ecclesiastical, great confidence in his fairness and sagacity. He takes care not to enter on those questions which cannot be properly reviewed except by the Court of Appeal, yet his judgment gives us the impression that had he been entrusted with the review of the law of the Purchas Judgment, he would, on some points at least, have set it aside. That, however, is a mere impression, and may be a false one,—may be due, in fact, to our own very strong conviction that the Purchas Judgment was legally weak, partly for want of an argument on the side of the Defendant, and partly for want of that minute historical know- ledge which discussions of that sort certainly demand. On the points, however, which he does decide, Lord Penzance seems to us to keep well between the opposite dangers,—that of being guided by policy instead of by the letter of the law, and that of failing to interpret the letter of the law by reference to those wide, practical considerations to which in England the letter of our law almost always has reference.
The first question which Lord Penzance had to decide was the question as to the solitary Communion,—a matter to some extent complicated by the requirements of an obsolete rubric. Almost every Anglican priest in England gives the Com- munion without knowing with any certainty how many of those present may or may not choose to join in it ; and though in ordinary churches, as a rule, all who stay do join in it, and it is the mark of a Ritualist place of worship when spectators remain who do not communicate, still the rubric which ordains that intending communicants shall signify their names the day before, is practically obsolete, and therefore the Incumbent of St. Peter's, Folkestone, had no more means of knowing how many would communicate on the day of the solitary Com- munion than any other clergyman in whose church the prac- tice of remaining as spectators of the celebration of the Eucharist, prevails. Still, the difficulty in this case was but the measure of the tact and good-sense which the Dean of Arches displayed. The Rubric forbidding Communions "except four, or three at the least, communicate with the priest" is explicit, and of course, though in churches where it is not the custom for spectators to stay, the clergyman may have quite adequate grounds for expecting enough communicants to satisfy the rubric without asking questions, it becomes the duty of a clergyman who has not that guarantee for his expectations to take some other mode of securing himself against a transgression of the law. In this case, it is pretty clear that Mr. Ridsdale was not even particularly anxious to obey it. He entered on the celebration, according to his own evidence, as given in his re-examination, "without any positive expectation one way or the other." It is clear, then, that he felt no moral confidence even that the Rubric would not be disobeyed. But clearly he was bound to feel such confidence, unless he could have pleaded, as he might have done in relation to the order that intending communi- cants should give notice on the previous day of their intention, that universal custom had made it obsolete. There was no real difficulty in sending round to know the intentions of the worshippers. The English Church insists much on the social character of the service, in order, no doubt, to make it clear that the rite does not consist in homage to the consecrated elements, but in the recognition of Christ's life and death as the bond between man and man. Nor does any one pretend that this guarantee has ever fallen into disuse. Mr. Ridsdale, therefore, ought to have taken care to have "a positive expectation, one way or the other," and was only war- ranted in celebrating the service, if he had good grounds for expecting three or more communicants. It will hardly be contended, we think, after perusing Lord Penzance's reasons for his decision on this point, that any injustice was done to him in the judgment.
But the more important part of Lord Penzance's judgment remains—namely, whether " ornaments " should be allowed in English Churches, which there is every reason to believe may be treated as something more than ornaments,—namely, as entering, in some degree, into the worship, and directly exciting the adoration of the worshipper. Lord Penzance accepted the judgment on the Exeter Reredos as finally deciding that ecclesias- tical ornaments, even though involving sculptured figures, are permissible in Churches, so long as there is no reason to appre- hend any abuse in the direction of what used to be called at the time of the Reformation, idolatry. He admitted that this ' idolatry ' has never consisted, even in well-instructed Roman Catholic churches, in the real worship of "images." The Roman Catholic theory, only accepts the painted or sculptured form as an assistance to the mental act of devotion but then this was precisely what the Reformers condemned, and what the Articles of the Church evidently regard as likely to lead devotion into a completely wrong track. The Twenty-second Article expressly says that "the Romish doctrine concerning worshipping and adoration, as well of images as of reliques," is "a fond thing, vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scrip- ture, but rather repugnant to the Word of God." Now, the Romish doctrine is tolerably explicit,—that the image or picture helps the mood of adoration, and is in some way, therefore, rightly involved in the spiritual act. And this view the English Church condemns as false, and even "re- pugnant to the Word of God." Whether the Church be right, —whether, even if it was right in the sixteenth and seven- teenth centuries, there is still serious danger of the same kind as was then apprehended,—is not a question for Lord Penzance. All he has to decide is, whether in the case of a particular crucifix or other adornment of the Church, adornment is the only object, or whether abuse of the symbol in the sense feared by the Church when she drew up the Twenty- second Article is still possible. Lord Penzance holds that in the case of a crucifix placed prominently above the screen, there may be still danger of its assuming too supersti- tious an importance in the minds of the ignorant, and he is not satisfied that in this particular case it had been placed there solely for the purpose of artistic ornamenta- tion. Holding thus, of course Lord Penzance was right in ordering its removal. Whether he was right in anticipating these dangers from the presence of crucifixes in a church any more than from stained-glass pictures of the Crucifixion in the windows of the same church is, of course, very questionable. It is a question of the extent of popular ignorance and popular superstition. For our own parts, we should not dream that, in any church where superstitious adoration was not directly inculcated, the crucifix would be at all more dangerous than the cross. Moreover, the distinction which Lord Penzance draws between the artistic decoration of a church, and the use of any part of that decoration to assist worship, is certainly an exceedingly fine one. We suppose almost every one has either himself felt, or has at least encountered in multi- tudes the feeling, that grand churches nobly ornamented, foster devotion. If so, every perceived element in that orna- mentation is to some extent "involved," to use Lord Pen- zance's expression, in the act of devotion, and it is clearly most difficult to say whether the mode in which it is so involved lies within the meaning of the condemnation passed by the Twenty-second Article or outside it. For our own parts, we have no belief in idolatry of the image-worshipping kind, in any country of Northern Europe at all. There is plenty of idolatry amongst us, but it is of a much more subtle kind, consisting in the dis- position to be content with lower conceptions of God, while higher are really within our reach; but of any disposition to lose God in paintings or images, instead of being carried up by these things—so far as they really do stimulate devotion— to God, we don't suppose there is much left, at least in Northern Europe. Still it is a question of judgment, and Lord Penzance's judgment is naturally influenced, and we suppose rightly influenced, by the tendency shown in Ritualistic Churches to lay a sort of stress which is any- thing but merely artistic on these crucifixes and pictures of Veronica and delineations of other fabulous incidents in the story of the Crucifixion, and to regard them as of the first importance for the education of the poor. Of course, the danger, if danger there be, depends on the sort of importance attached to these things ; and of course, if the importance attached to them by any of our clergy is very great, Judges like Lord Penzance will see real danger that these sensuous stimulants of worship may recover some of their medizeval significance. We cannot say that we really fear it. But as Lord Penzance does, he is evidently quite right to pronounce against the legitimacy of ornaments which appear to endanger the loyalty of the people to the more spiritual worship of the Reformed Church. As to its tone, Lord Penzance's judgment was throughout sober, cautious, and discriminating.
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