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Church. Yet sometimes they have shewn themselves, in my judgment, over anxious to establish a complete correspondence between our own and ancient practice, and strained some little points in a way that would seem to indicate they thought our Church needed justification if she ventured on anything ceremonial for which she could not produce a precedent. For example, I would prefer to confess that the recital of the Ten Commandments in the Communion Service is a peculiarity of the English ritual, than to contend with Palmer, that the reading of a lesson from the Old Testament was customary in the Ancient Church; and that, therefore, the Church of England was justified in appointing an Old Testament Lesson taken permanently from the Book of Exodus, and not varying from Sunday to Sunday, to be read in this part of her Service. This account of the matter was repeated in the first edition of the 'Directorium Anglicanum;' but in the second edition the Editor acknowledges the weakness of this plea, and confesses with tears that the introduction of the Ten Commandments here is a singular and grievous innovation for which no justification can be found.

It would be easy to produce other examples of the same kind. Those who give their allegiance to a dead Church instead of a living one, adopt a system which admits of no elasticity, and are governed by rules which are founded on principles admitting no intelligible justification. They tell us, for instance, that such and such are the only admissible materials for an altar-cloth; such and such the only legitimate colours. If this were laid down as a rule by the existing Church, I am satisfied to submit without asking reasons. The king commands -"nil ultra quæro plebeius." But when an unauthorized

person requires me to observe the same rule, I naturally ask for reasons; and I find nothing better than what some slave of fashion might give for thinking it shocking to wear a dress cut in some unusual way. She shakes her head, and says "It is not worn so;" but why it is not, or why it might not be, she would find it impossible to tell. The fact is, it is idle for us now to say,-" We will belong to the Church of the fifteenth century." We have been born in the nineteenth century, and to the Church of that century we must belong, or to none at all. If we insist on going back,

we may as well go back to the first century as to the fifteenth. It is all the same whether a man refuse to comply with Church regulations because in his judgment they are not the wisest that could be devised, or because he finds that in former days different regulations were in force. Without insisting on the claims of the Church as a Divine Society, we may at least expect that she shall receive as much obedience from her members as must be given by the members of any human society where men combine for a common object, as is given by the members of a cricket club or chess club. Imagine a chess player who one day rejected the present rules and insisted on playing according to the rules of Philidor's time; then, if we had yielded to him in this, the next week carrying his researches further back and requiring us to conform to the mediæval Italian code; and if we had gratified him thus far, in another week's time, as he extended his antiquarian researches, demanding our compliance with the rules of the game as practised in the East in ancient times; and I think we should come to the conclusion that so very arbitrary a person had better play by himself, and not expect that others should conform to his whims. And I do not think the illustration in the least exaggerates the changeableness and uncertainty of the self-imposed antiquarian code the rules of which vary not only from one church to another, but which are even in any one church in a perpetual state of alteration, as the restorers of ancient practices extend their reading, and as their courage to throw existing rubrics overboard increases. In fact it is made a reproach to a church now if its ritual remains for a few years without alteration. In the second series of The Church and the World' Mr. Bennett complains that "S. Paul's, Knightsbridge, and S. Barnabas', Pimlico, though among the first churches of the western part of London in setting forth the teaching of the Tracts, and though nobly and bravely bearing the brunt of the battle of the World from 1850 to 1857, since that time have made the least progress in advancing the Church order and ritual. And the same may be said of All Saints', Margaret Street; first in the movement when in a poor misshapen room in Margaret Street Mr. Oakeley presided over it, and the Catholic usages of the church drew crowds of worshippers to learn and to adore what then was a novelty, still this church is

equally remarkable with S. Paul's and S. Barnabas' for making no advance."

I have no desire to see a code established of unbending uniformity, so that the Church's Service should be at all times, and at all places, absolutely the same. We must accept it as a fact that, according to men's differences in intellectual and æsthetic culture, their tastes differ exceedingly. What to one seems noble and grand simplicity, to another seems dry, cold, poor; what to one seems gorgeous and impressive, is condemned by another as meretricious, childish, sensual. It is true Christian wisdom to make the accessories of religion attractive to the people to whom it is offered; attractive in the way their tastes demand. At present our Church's rules allow of considerable diversity, nor should I object to see greater latitude on some points permitted by lawful authority. But I do object to each priest's being permitted to select from antiquity a ritual for himself uncontrolled either by rubric or by the authority of his ordinary. Public worship could not be conducted if the people shewed as little regard for the wishes of the clergyman as he sometimes does for theirs. He may choose that the Litany shall be sung, but how can it be sung if each person insists on singing to a tune of his own? There have been sneers in abundance at the "aggrieved parishioner;" but it is surely a real practical grievance that the clergyman should have power to revolutionize the services of his church in a manner most distasteful and offensive to his congregation, and that they should have no remedy unless they choose to turn God's house into a bear garden, and His service into brawling and contention.*

Since the above was written it has received a striking illustration from the letter in which Mr. Hubbard, the patron and founder of the Church of St. Alban, Holborn, "challenges the sympathy and assistance" of his Bishop because of the "persistent introduction of strange and obsolete practices" by an incumbent who, at the time of his appointment, had given Mr. Hubbard an "earnest assurance of his wish to carry on the work in accordance with his desire as far as he possibly could," and of his endeavour "to act as a true and faithful priest of the Church of England with prudence and discretion."

The language with which Mr. Hubbard closes his letter to the Bishop of London is nearly identical with that employed in the text: "In these days it would be as impolitic as unjust to narrow the liberty of either the clergy or the laity of our Church; but liberty must not degenerate into licence. No Church, no corporation, no society can exist without order and without law; and it must be decided whether, consistently with order, law, and the uniformity which results from them, individuals can be permitted to act independently of all authority and opinion but their own."

Public sympathy is now generally against any interference of authority with individual liberty; but this is a matter where the liberty of the clergyman is the slavery of the people. If he be exempted from all control of rubric or Bishop, the people must either acquiesce in what they will often regard as a total change of the religion taught in their church, or else absent themselves from the houses where they and their fathers have been wont to worship, and their right to a continued use of which, on the same terms, is involved in the very notion of an Establishment.

It is no wonder, then, that an Establishment should not be in favour with the party of which I am speaking, and that they should express their desire to see the Church relieved from the fetters which State connexion imposes on it. But I am persuaded that when the matter is examined into, it will be found that what is really objected to is often not limitations imposed by the State on Church authority, but the power, limited as it is, which State connexion gives to Church officers to enforce obedience. The ideal of many is a Church completely on the voluntary system, where the priest, supported by liberal offertories from his congregation, should be absolutely uncontrolled by any external authority. If a Bishop thoroughly agree with him, he will gladly accept so respectable a leader; if the Bishop disapprove of his proceedings, he does not desire to trouble himself about him, unless he happen to want ordination for a curate. This conception, however, could only be carried out on the system of the Independents; for if the Church of England, though separated from the State, were to remain together as one body, it is probable that the vote of a considerable majority would impose on individual liberty restrictions quite as severe as any which the law of the land imposes at present. I cannot help branding as schismatical a conception which reduces the Church from an organised body to a mere name for a collection of independent Presbyters, each teaching and acting as he pleases. One is reminded of Lord Amberley's proposal of an Established Church, completely relieved from the incumbrance of creeds, each of whose teachers was left completely free, and in which, if I remember right, even the existence of a God was to be an open question.

The toleration taught by some of the Ritualist divines resembles much more the latitudinarianism of Lord Amberley than the comprehensiveness of Christian charity. They tell us that they only claim the right to wear chasubles themselves, but have no wish to force their neighbour to do so against his conscience. They have no desire to persecute or to turn others out of the Church. "We look on the Church as a great hospital, meant for the cure of all spiritual ailments, and especially for that zymotic disorder called Protestantism. The prospect of cure within the walls is, we believe, far greater than it is for out-patients, and therefore while not willing to relax unduly the necessary regulations of the house, we should never think of turning out some poor cretin whose faculties allow him to count up to exactly Thirty-nine Articles and no more." (The Church and the World,' third series, p. 66.) No one understands the first principles of toleration, who holds that all who do not agree with himself must be either idiots or knaves. I reverence the toleration which springs from Christian charity, which can recognise in men of other theological schools real love for Christ and zeal for His cause, and can therefore cheerfully own them as brethren, because it is felt that the points of agreement are vastly more important than those of difference. But I have no respect for the toleration which springs from indifference or from weakness. If you refuse to own men as brethren, if you treat them as deniers of vital truth, if, when you acquit them of wilful dishonesty, you insultingly excuse them on the ground of intellectual feebleness or stupid ignorance, and yet are content that they should remain authorised teachers of the same Church as yourself, it cannot but be thought that the reason either is, because you are not strong enough to enforce as you would wish the "necessary regulations of the house," or because you are indifferent to the organic unity of the Church, and, provided you can keep your own conventicle open to teach in it what you believe to be truth, are not concerned in what is taught by others, with whom, though nominally your fellowpresbyters, you have no real connexion.

I could give other illustrations of the prevalence of schis matical tendencies at the present day; but I content myself with those which I have produced: namely, that men who speak with contempt and abhorrence of the Reformers and

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