The Bishop of Carlisle has written an admirable answer to
Lord Ebury, who had told him that he did not see what there was to defend in the English Church, so long as such appoint- ments were made as the recent appointment of Dr. King to the See of Lincoln, without any protest by the Bench of Bishops against what Lord Ebary regards as a practical repudiation of the reform of the Church carried in the six- teenth century. Dr. Hervey Goodwin points out that it was that reform which made the Church the Anglo- Catholic Church, and gave it the basis which Lord Ebury is so anxious to undermine. As to a protest against Dr. King's appointment to the See of Lincoln, the Bishop of Carlisle regards it as simply ridiculous. There is no reason at all to suppose Dr. King less loyal to the Church than any other of its Bishops. If Lord Ebury had succeeded in altering the constitution of the Church by Act of Parlia- ment, without the assent of any body representing the Church itself,—as he recently attempted,—then Lord Ebury would have done more to break up the Reformed Church than all the Ritualists had attempted. Further, the Bishop of Carlisle repudiates the notion that in his own diocese at all events there is a single Church which celebrates either the Mass, or anything like the Mass ; and he does not believe that, whatever exceptional follies may occur here and there, there is any diocese in England in which any really Roman Catholic service is per- mitted,—the true mark of Roman Catholicism being the use of a dead language and the refusal of the wine to the Laity.
Previous page
