evidence, gave a judgment of policy as to 'lights,' &c., does little more than 'prove' the contrary' rule; for at most he only decided that if you did certain things in a kind of sidelong way they would be not unlawful.' Surely when one finds a true Dean of Arches agreeing with Lord Penzance, when the Daily News quotes with approval the words of Archbishop Temple, when Mr. Kensit is at one with Cardinal Vaughan, it is a case where securus judicat fairly applies. The round world knows best, and any reasonable men in your stead would own that they had been mistaken, and would either yield to lawful authority or go out.'

Yes, such an attack would be unanswerable, crushing indeed, were it not that a complete historical answer to it lies ready to hand. Such answer, put shortly, is this: Every change in the manner of Divine Service which the Tractarians began, almost every ceremonial practice which the Puseyites' tried to introduce, has long since been accepted, either as the ordinary use' in the Church (and so having no party character), or at least as something which no authority can forbid.

Choral morning and evening prayer (or even the chanting of the psalms), turning towards the altar at the Creed, gathering the alms in bags-as at Margaret Street Chapel-and, above all, preaching in a surplice: these were the things which the bishops and archbishops of those days joined in denouncing as unlawful, disloyal, or, even if some of them were technically legal, as wholly alien to the spirit of Our Reformed Church.' So, too, with legal decisions; the illegal 'stole' in all colours is worn without let or hindrance, and its use encouraged by many bishops, even in cases where there is no lawful ground according to Catholic practice or Anglican tradition for its being worn at all. The often-condemned crucifix, forbidden by diocesan chancellors again and again as well as by the civil courts, stands conspicuous above the high altars of great cathedrals, with episcopal and archiepiscopal sanction. But it is needless to multiply instances; they crowd on one even as one writes-the unbleached wax candles, the crosier and mitre, at the obsequies of the late Bishop of London; the picture of the Madonna and other trappings of the chapelle ardente where lay the body of our beloved Queen.

Truly, the flowing tide is with us,' but for the most part it moves smoothly, so that the progress does not startle; it is only now and then, when a rapid is reached or some cross-current roughens the water, that public attention is aroused. How far that tide has taken us let Lady Wimborne herself show, when she quotes once more that oft-quoted Plan of Campaign' article:

A choral service, so far as psalms and canticles are concerned, on some weekday evening. . . where there is monthly Communion, let it be fortnightly (sic); where it is fortnightly, let it be weekly; where all this is existing, candlesticks with unlighted candles (!) may be introduced. Where the black gown is in use in the pulpit on Sundays, let it disappear in the week.

ADVANCED' VIEW OF THE

It is wonderful that, when writing her sober and well-reasoned article in the October issue, Lady Wimborne did not see how strongly this passage told against her alarmist view. In 1867, 'the organ of the Ritualist party'-so she styles it, and so perhaps in its anteLittledalean days it may have been-deemed half-choral services (on weekdays only), the surplice in the pulpit, with the same limitation, and unlighted candles things which needed a 'plain and frank statement to the people' before they were brought into use. Above all, the Church Times looked on a weekly celebration of the Eucharist as a counsel of perfection, even a fortnightly one being an innovation.

To-day it would be hard to find a town church, even of the most 'Evangelical' kind, where the Lord's Supper is not administered at some hour or another every Lord's Day; while as to the other things, they have long ago passed out of the region of party feeling, and are now only a part of the 'dignified accompaniments which generally attend morning prayer,' as Dr. Creighton put it in his latest charge. One may take it that Lady Wimborne herself sometimes worships without scruples of conscience in churches where the service is partly choral, where there is a weekly Communion, possibly even where that truly dark ceremony' of lightless candlesticks is in use; as for an unsurpliced preacher, she would be puzzled to find one unless she sought him in some very 'advanced' church where a funeral 'panegyric' was being delivered.

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It is hard now even to believe, much less to realise, that such things raised fierce riots fifty years ago, and were still matters of furious controversy in the 'seventies.' Yet so it was; more than that, the very strongest censures on such practices were pronounced by bishops and archbishops. Just as nowadays there are one or two prelates who have refused to license assistant curates unless they undertook not to hear confessions, or promised to conform to the Lambeth 'Opinions,' SO then there were bishops who as arbitrarily and lawlessly required a pledge not to wear a surplice in the pulpit as a condition for licence, or even for ordination. Our High Church' friends-I hope I do no wrong to certain professors, canons, antiquarians, and others in even speaking of them as 'friends'—are never weary of telling us that in failing to obey our bishops we are not only lawless oath-breakers, but, above all, unCatholic. But, we feel bound to ask, why if it be a wrong to 'disobey' Drs. Creighton, Perowne, or Forrest-Browne, was it right to withstand Drs. Blomfield, Baring, or Jackson? If the solemnly pronounced opinions of the present two primates 'must command universal obedience,' why should not the more unhesitating pronouncements of Archbishops Tait and Thompson require a like obedience?

The latter was, if I mistake not, made a requisite for acceptance in a candidate for the priesthood-perhaps the worst instance of episcopal tyranny known to this generation.

Had such submission been yielded, it is certain that, so far as man's agency is concerned, the outward beauty of holiness would never have been restored to our churches, nor something of the light and warmth of Catholic devotion to our public worship. So far as we can judge from Tractarian experience, neither would the re-conversion of England to the One Faith have made much progress; great men as were the first leaders of the 'Oxford Movement,' they wrought surprisingly little change in the beliefs and religious practice of the laity of their day. Certainly High Churchmen would not have taken the lead, nor have won for themselves those fruits of other men's labours into which they now enter peacefully and in the light of episcopal favour. Before the 'Puseyite' revival of ceremonial, even so strong and bold a man as Dr. Hook, when vicar of a Coventry church with the (then) usual reading-desk out in the nave, declared that 'we ought to get back into the chancels, but that is impossible.' It may, indeed, be said that hitherto the bishops had only tried to enforce the bidding of secular courts, and did not speak-as our present primates have spoken-on their own responsibility. But this plea will not hold good. Dr. Tait (when Bishop of London) said expressly, as to one of the most important judgments, that his advice and Archbishop Sumner's was given, and, he believed, ‘was perfectly followed.' Not only so, but the Lambeth Pastoral of 1875, put forth by the primates in the name of the assembled prelates of the Anglican rite throughout the world, speaks of these judgments as 'the law of this Church and realm thus clearly interpreted . . . (those) judicial decisions which we, the clergy, are bound by every consideration to obey.'"

The tolerant and fair-minded Bishop of Carlisle, Harvey Goodwin, had actually formed the same opinion as the Judicial Committee as to the advertisements' in Elizabeth's reign making void the present Ornaments Rubric, before that body put forth its most strange judgment an opinion which now by common consent is owned to be an impossible one. Every pronouncement of the civil courts (except the first one which for the time legalised vestments) has been vouched for by former diocesans, not only as being authoritative in itself, but also as declaring the bishop's own mind. Yet some of these decisions have been practically reversed-e.g. those against the ' eastward position' and altar-lights; others are openly disregarded, and some forbid things (such as the wearing of a stole) which many of our present bishops strongly approve. When once again we are called on to submit ourselves with glad minds to some new admonitions, we cannot forget what has gone before, nor doubt that such submission would leave us as far as ever from a final settlement. None of us doubt that disobedience to bishops is in itself a grave

2 Italics are my own.

evil, in fact an evil to be avoided at any cost except that of making ourselves partakers in the lawlessness of our chief pastors, their weak yielding to an unlawful State tyranny, or their contemptuous breaches of the common law and custom of the whole Church of Christ. In matters where no higher law is broken thereby, such obedience is and invariably has been yielded by the 'extreme' clergy, even when—as in the case of withholding or withdrawing curates' licences the bishops' action has often been most capricious and unfair. So too, in liturgical points, the general obedience of the clergy as to additional services,' &c., has been acknowledged by almost every diocesan. In February of 1899 the Bishop of Winchester said: 'It is with genuine thankfulness I am able to say that . . . every formal direction which I have hitherto thought it needful to give has been complied with by the clergy concerned.'

In this spirit a hearing by the two primates of arguments on disputed points of ceremonial and ritual practices, with a pronouncement from them on such points, was wished for by some of the 'advanced' party, and would have been received with at least deep respect by all; provided only that it did not base itself upon the decisions of civil courts, nor read a 'not' into some of the Church's rubrics.

That authority is to be found in the Prayer-book for such archiepiscopal rulings we none of us believed. In one of the three introductory prefaces to the present Book, under the heading 'Concerning the Service of the Church,' there is a remark of the most casual kind that 'forasmuch as doubts may arise, to appease all such diversity (if any arise) . . . the parties that so doubt shall always resort to the bishop of the diocese. And if he be in doubt, then he may' ('may,' be it noted, not shall')' send for the resolution thereof to the archbishop.' The context of the whole preface shows that it is only 'Divine Service'3-i.e. the choir offices, and not sacramental rites-with which it is concerned, and also that slight ambiguities on liturgical points, such as the 'concurrence' of feasts, the number of collects to be said, and so forth, are to be the matters thus dealt with. Even in such things the primate was not given jurisdiction, unless one of his suffragans were in doubt, and chose to send the matter to him 'for resolution.' Surely never before was a claim to so great authority based on such slight foundation. Also, in the case of the incumbents whose practices came before the two archbishops, no 'doubts' had arisen' in their minds: they did not so doubt,' hence they did not wish to resort to the bishop of the diocese '-in fact, they only consented to do so under strong pressure from their respective ordinaries.

In the English Breviaries the words 'Servitium Divinum' (Divine Service) were used for what is now usually called Officium Divinum;' they were never applied to the Mass.

Still, there was an earnest wish among the majority of the Catholicising party, lay and clerical, to hear and obey the voice of our chief pastors, even when they spoke without official authority. Lord Halifax and other laymen urged this course, backed up (as I can bear witness) by many 'extreme' priests. It is not our fault that in answer came that staggering pronouncement which flung us back to something little short of anarchy: a pronouncement resting wholly on a very doubtful interpretation of five words in a probably obsolete Act of Parliament. Our present rubric, written a hundred years after Elizabeth's Act, makes no reference whatever to that statute; yet Dr. Temple bids us believe that the whole sense of the rubric is governed by those five words of that Act, even to the extent of reversing its obvious meaning in many important points.

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The Lambeth Opinion, in fact, made the following assumptions: (1) That the Elizabethan Act of Uniformity was adopted' by Convocation in 1662, seemingly as an Urban Council adopts' the Free Library Act; (2) that the words, None other or otherwise,' apply to the form of public worship and its accompanying ceremonies -not, as most have thought to be the case, to the alterations in the Second Prayer-book of Edward authorised by that Act; (3) that ceremonial acts, done without any form of words, would make the service other and otherwise' than was authorised, any rubrical directions notwithstanding.

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Now even if we allow, yielding far more than seems to be true, that there is an 'even chance' of each of these assumptions being right, still, by the theory of probabilities,' the odds are heavily against the correctness of the conclusion arrived at. If the supposed meaning of 'none other and otherwise' were to be generally accepted and acted upon, the effect on the usual form of public worship would be simply appalling-a sermon must be preached at every Communion Service, no hymns could be sung except before the beginning or after the end of public services, all baptisms must be administered ‘after the last lesson at morning or evening prayer,' and so forth; uniformity would be uniform indeed. For if the words hold good of ceremonial acts, much more must they apply to the saying or singing of anything which makes the actual order of service 'other' than what is set down in the Prayer-book. Even the man in the street had some inkling that this was the case, and hardly expected that such universal obedience' would be given to the pronouncement as an eminent prelate claimed for it. It was remembered that any acceptance of the 'Lincoln Judgment,' uttered by what claimed to be a true spiritual court,' had been repudiated before that decision was known. When that judgment proved, on the whole, to

In one sense, it probably was so, being-if it were anything at all-the Legatine Court' of the archbishop, as Legatus Natus of the Pope. But the right of appeal to the Judicial Committee (instead of the Holy See) made all the difference.